Veckatimest is more song-oriented than its predecessors without sacrificing any experimental tics, making for the band’s most satisfying record yet.
Veckatimest is deep, it’s rich, it’s soulful and on more than enough occasions it’s just good, old-fashioned, spine-shudderingly beautiful.
Veckatimest sounds like the final product of a meticulous and exacting evolutionary process—one that has added depth and color to their swooning chamber pop arrangements, crispness to their intricate rhythms and intensity to their careful performances.
What's perhaps the most remarkable thing about the truly remarkable Veckatimest, however, is how very exciting much of it is; no small feat for a painstaking chamber-pop record that never once veers above the middle tempo.
By cutting themselves off from a hurry-everywhere-and-everything society, Grizzly Bear have successfully realised their most rewarding record yet, and the first to truly feature the four in perfect harmony.
Ambitious yet restrained, elegant yet exciting, Veckatimest is an endlessly-rewarding album which seems destined to vie with Animal Collective‘s Merriweather Post Pavilion for the title of the year’s best.
The band has swapped out the six-minute epics of Yellow House for a greater number of shorter works, packed with just as many concepts but integrated with more skill and with more respect for the pieces as holistic edifices containing a single incredible idea at each of their centers.
The first two songs are the most accessible work Grizzly Bear’s ever done, and those tracks alone are enough to make Veckatimest worth several listens. Most of this album, though, is going to take way more effort to get into.
This is pop music at its finest ... here, in its grandiosity, Grizzly Bear has found a perfect balance and created an album well worth investing in.
This album envelops Grizzly Bear’s focus and their specific ideation. Realize that Veckatimest will not be a wild ride, but simply a remarkable listen that exceeds all expectations.
Veckatimest is a sonic artifact that feels utterly dislocated, existing in an enigmatic world where time and distance are merely memories, and an unsurpassable aesthetic of love and loss reigns supreme.
‘Veckatimest’ is a myriad tapestry based on simple influences; that’s what makes it so compelling.
‘Veckatimest’ is not only the highest water mark in its makers’ careers to date, but also perhaps the finest record of its kind released so far this year.
Veckatimest isn’t a good album. It’s a beautiful album. Unhurried and effortlessly, Grizzly Bear finds a balance in which detachment and patience mix to sound worldly and wise.
It’s a sophisticated work, delicately and meticulously crafted, and its effete pleasantness lends itself as well to Late Night performances as New Yorker coverage.
Everything on Veckatimest, from the loftiest harmony to the subtlest string pluck, serves a purpose, even if there’s room for a little more.
The swirling gypsy dazzle of ”Southern Point” and ”Two Weeks,” with its lush Beach Boy melodies and jaunty piano jangle, are intoxicating. If the less immediate second half brings diminishing returns, the early glow still lingers.
Nearly every song feels like the musical equivalent of a big meal: there's lots to digest, and coming back for second (and thirds, and more) is necessary.
Even as they feature orchestras, women’s choirs, and Beach House singer Victoria Legrand on Veckatimest, the album is still an intimate, ascetic affair.
Grizzly Bear could have rested on their laurels and still brought in the plaudits, Veckatimest is a bold step forward that should finally turn those sitting on the fence while exceeding the expectations of those already converted.
The album dips and tips and ultimately soars as a result, Rossen and company having turned near-disaster into sonic triumph.
While I’m not sure Veckatimest is the huge improvement on Yellow House that some blogs claim it to be, it’s unquestionably a lovely record and it deserves to be heard on land, sea, indoors and out.
Ambitious, brooding and cerebral, Veckatimest grows on you with each listen, bathing you in choirboy vocal harmonies, softly swished drums, laid-back psychedelic guitar patterns and questioning lyrics that focus on difficult negotiations with a loved one.
The musical emphasis subtly shifts, from track to track and within tracks ... to create something that feels rather greater than the sum of its parts.
The third disc from this Brooklyn quartet has a sound that is completely its own: an opulent, intimate rumble built on churning acoustic riffs, haunted croons and precise string parts.
Their carefully orchestrated, almost minimalist chamber-pop sound is as pretty as ever, but the whole seems to sag when it should be soaring: weighed down by the scantly deserved ennui of the lyrics and the minor-key shifts that buttress them.
A piece of art that had too much pressure ascribed to it, that found its creators trying too hard to make a masterpiece when they could have followed a more natural progression.
#1 | / | NPR |
#1 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
#2 | / | A.V. Club |
#2 | / | Beats Per Minute |
#2 | / | No Ripcord |
#2 | / | PopMatters |
#2 | / | Pretty Much Amazing |
#2 | / | Stereogum |
#2 | / | Treble |
#4 | / | Clash |