Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

"I can't. Get out. Of what I'm into with you." Comes the pleading refrain, the beautiful prison built from love, the acceptance of a commitment to the agonies and pleasures of throwing yourself into another person, a piece of bittersweet romantic honesty that floats so delicately out of the tail section of All We Ask that it almost seems possible to cup it out of the air and hold it to your chest. It's easy enough to allow moments like this to float by, unnoticed. There is after all, a plethora of sweet, gentle melodic peaks and dramatic, rolling troughs to choose from besides. You don't get smoke without fire. Veckatimest is here and crackling away under the billowing clouds of hype and hyperbole there's a flame burning. Grizzly Bear have written an album with a beating heart.Veckatimest is the third full-length album from Brooklyn-based chamber-pop merchants Grizzly Bear. In recording this album, the band worked with  classical composer Nico Muhly, visited upstate New York, a church in Brooklyn and an uninhabited island called, in the language of the Native Americans, Veckatimest. In many ways, it's a logical ancestor of Yellow House, with the wind-tunnel folk more dramatic at times and studded with strong-willed, would-be alternative pop classics straining at the leash and glistening with studio sheen. Chris Taylor's production on Veckatimest has all of the depth and quality that the sound has always begged for. The leaked transcode of this album was a particular shame, the sound on Veckatimest proper is as crisp as a morning frost.Early on, the highly approachable and ultimately heavily addictive pop ballad 'Two Weeks', featuring Beach House's Victoria Legrand on backing vocals lays out the sorts of progressions that Grizzly Bear have made from Yellow House. Daniel Rossen's bouncing ditty makes a tight grip, while Ed Droste delivers a series of falsetto-laced assurances "Just like yesterday, I told you I would stay/ Make it easy, Take your time." The accessible pop pieces are counterbalanced by an expected amount of brow-furrowing noise based drama and other-worldly vocal meditations on loss and self-doubt "I'm cheerleading myself, I should've made it matter. Go on, let it go- it doesn't mean a thing.." Indeed, it's that buoyant sense of optimism established on 'Two Weeks' that becomes tinged with cynicism and fatigue as the album progresses, as commitment to the mutually assured imprisonment of a relationship wanes "If it's all or nothing then let me go. There was time, it took time/There is time, so much time/There is time, so much time" These resonant post-modern love songs puncture with a powerful verve and clarity.From time to time albums do exactly what they are supposed to do. No more, no less.  The bar is already fairly high, it might just have been raised again. Veckatimest is deep, it's rich, it's soulful and on more than enough occasions it's just good, old-fashioned, spine-shudderingly beautiful. From an album such as this, what more could one really ask for? Veckatimest fulfills itself, a sincere and beautiful album, a classic of 2009. 100%Grizzly Bear official website