In all, Painted Ruins represents the band’s strongest compositions since Yellow House—and still, there’s something weirdly revolutionary about this kind of formalism in 2017.
The five years of space following has worked in their favour — leading to the conception of a creature that breathes confidently with a heavy sense of hyper-ambition in ‘Painted Ruins’.
While the music industry has changed and evolved since Shields, on Painted Ruins Grizzly Bear prove that there is still a space and a sound that only they can occupy.
Painted Ruins is a wondrously complex adventure that rewards attention and patience yet is never inscrutable.
It’s a challenging piece of work. Grizzly Bear have always had high expectations of their audience, and Painted Ruins is no exception. You need to meet it on its terms.
The chief irony of Painted Ruins is that this album tackling the heavy subject of all things crumbling and passing ends up being the band’s most alive, cohesive offering.
There is no mistaking Grizzly Bear's sound; this album doesn't drastically change anything from their 'formula', but when said the formula is so enthralling and unpredictable, no wonder it still hasn't lost its sheen after a decade creating it.
Painted Ruins stands as Grizzly Bear's poppiest record, though not at the expense of the band's trademark orchestral whirlwind and deliberately obscured and abstracted messages.
So imaginative and detailed is their sound that only the slightest fine-tuning is ever really required, and when its constituent parts come together, as during the wonderfully groggy climax of album closer "Sky Took Hold," there are few that can match them.
While the detailing is still incredibly myopic – Three Rings evokes a dirty iceberg slipping into the sea shard by shard – bold paint splatters now daub their crosshatchings.
Painted Ruins is a harmonious, richly textured tapestry of songwriting and performance, their most mature record to date.
Painted Ruins is very much a Grizzly Bear record, with the band capitalizing on the glorious, experimental melodies that have become their hallmark. But the project is much more avant garde than their previous records, with their greater abundance of catchy hooks and hits.
The intricate compositions on the band’s fifth album are bound tighter than ever, evoking distant images and emotions that continually shift in and out of focus.
Painted Ruins stops short of fearlessly exploring new musical terrain, instead content to approach the familiar from new angles.
Occasionally, Painted Ruins' drifting meditations border on meandering, but its open-ended beauty is well worth the close listening it takes for the album to fully reveal itself.
The sound is still ornate – on "Glass Hillside," nylon-string embroidery melts into gilded choirs, with oddball melodies recalling Brit proggers Soft Machine. Elsewhere, simple cybernetic beats and synths dominate.
You get some of the space of Yellow House, some of the careful orchestration of Veckatimest, some of the more overt rock elements of Shields. But this one takes those elements and adds others to take the band’s sound in a different direction.
A swirling, abstract painting of an album, and an eclectic slow burner, ‘Painted Ruins’ serves more as a fascinating indication of where Grizzly Bear could head next than anything else.
Grizzly Bear returns from a five-year hibernation with a mirror image of their previous album, Shields.
Too much hard work – on the listener’s part, as well as theirs – is invested, with scant return.
On Painted Ruins, sonic exploration causes the album’s atmosphere to rise to salience and all but divest its songs of distinctiveness and viscera.
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