By Justine ReisingerPLAY Writer
Coming home is a merry, noteworthy event for Chicago native Christopher Bear, drummer and vocalist of Grizzly Bear. Following a whirlwind few months after the much-praised release of Yellow House (Warp) last fall, the band hit the road and garnered attention from other up-and-comers in the music scene. Last Friday, they played a sold-out show at Chicago’s Subterranean – another part of the band’s knockout year.
“I always like playing in Chicago … It’s kind of nice and sort of gratifying in a way for me to be able to show them the product of a lot of hard work,” Bear says. “It’s been a pretty wild year.”
Yellow House, recorded during the summer of 2005 in singer/guitarist Edward Droste’s mother’s yellow house off Cape Cod, captures a collaboration and experimentation not previously heard on a Grizzly Bear recording. The band’s stirring four-part harmonies, drowning melodies and developed instrumentation bring the band’s previous DIY sound to hypnotizing levels of ambiance.
“Marla,” a stand-out on the record, was originally recorded in the 1930s by Droste’s great aunt and was rediscovered by the band while they were recording.
“We thought it would be really cool to try to redo (‘Marla’) and give it our own sort of touch and we ended up taking off with it,” Bear says. “It was a really fun one to do, just interesting having it come from a completely different place than one of us and adding our own sort of element to it.”
“The Knife,” a mainstay off the new album, has been covered by a range of bands, from young Canadian upstarts the Born Ruffians to Brazilian electro-rock group Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) and is sampled by electronic music producer Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) in a mash-up with hip-hop duo Clipse.
The partnerships, Bear says, are products of the Internet and not necessarily themselves.
“The Internet has brought people together … I guess it’s just how it happened. We didn’t really knock down Gregg’s door and say, ‘Hey, do a ‘Girl Talk’ remix with this.’ He just came to us with the idea and we said, ‘Cool, go for it,'” Bear says. “The powers of the Internet.”
The latest album represents the process of recording and functioning as a new band together, according to Bear, since Grizzly Bear’s first album was originally written and composed by Droste. After recording Horn of Plenty in 2004, alone in his bedroom while mourning the end of a relationship, Droste brought in Bear to play drums and help the final bits of recording. Chris Taylor and Daniel Rossen joined the group soon after for live performances.
Following Grizzly Bear’s final leg of touring, the band will have time off to move into their new rehearsal space in Brooklyn. “We can go home mid-rehearsal and make lunch!” Bear gushes, and “start planting seeds for new ideas.”
For now, Bear remains slightly amazed with how well everything is progressing for the band.
“I’m really excited about how everything is going. I’m happy that people are still coming out to see us,” Bear says. “Just having the whole blog world support us, that sort of thing definitely has helped generate more awareness with the group faster than I would have ever expected.”
Medill sophomore Justine Reisinger is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
