Hi!

I just really like this picture. Eddie D. slaps us with his best mad-dawg show-down face, and Chris Taylor is obviously thinking about me. LIKE, DUH.

Robbie P., You're My Hero

Robin Pecknold is my hero because his Twitter is full of treasures. Check this out:



Clara Rockmore makes the super-alienating sound of a theramin sound like a human voice. I think I just died.

Ah-HA!

I knew the Freak-a-Leak Version of Veckatimest sounded fishy. Check out the latest version of "Cheerleader" to hit the inter-waves, here:

EUREKA!

Volumes of difference!

Word on the street is that the boys were in LA recently for a video shoot. Yesssssssss.

An Oldie But a Goodie II

This is nothing new, but Fever Ray gives me steam-heat. Everything is so gorgeously dark. I might like Karin Dreijer Andersson's solo stuff more than The Knife...eep!

An Oldie But a Goodie

It's nearly two-years old, but behold: yet another reason why Grizzly Bear is my favorite band:

Grizzly Bear on Eating Lots of Meat

Cupcake-on with 'yo bad-self

Good evening lovelies. The Cupcake Adventure Club has recently inhabited an abandoned bakery on the corner of Cake Wrecks and unintelligible excitement.

Hang out, eat too many cupcakes, and then throw them up here:

Time to get ILL

The Only Reason to Watch Watchmen

Ummm, why are all of our villains sexually ambiguous? I'm sure someone has written on this... Matthew Goode's version of the purple-draped, Egyptian pharaoh-obsessed, Adrian Veidt is deliciously Bowie, but let's admit it, the rest of the film is certainly NOT sexually ambiguous. We have nearly-naked and comfortably-passive women at the beck 'n call of beefcake boys and not only fluorescent, but sparkly blue, all-powerful male anatomy out and about without warning. Thank goodness for Patrick Wilson's Nite Owl, who has all his smarts in the wrong place but no one cares because he's packaged just how we like 'em: big and dumb.


Ooops, that's two, three, four... reasons, huh?

Twitter Pitter Patter

photo by Jordan Lawrence


I think it's har-har that Eddie D. has a Twitter that he's hopelessly devoted to, but what I didn't expect is Robin Pecknold's (Fleet Foxes/Tweet Boxes, White Antelope) batter-up in the game. What's even funnier is catching Eddie D. and Robbie P. chatting via Twitter like internet pen pals. It's precious:


Eddie D. Tweets

Robbie P. Tweets Too

If Yellow House is about abandonment, then Veckatimest is about fear of abandonment.

The amount of roller-coaster rides that Veckatimest gets on mine iTunes is too much, but I'm working on that.


P.S. I love the internet. Check out this pic of Eddie D. in a winner costume.

Adventures in Synonym Finder

One of my adorable bosses sang praises for J.I. Rodale's The Synonym Finder and here's why. Beloved S.F. offers an abundance of commonly articulated words, but then will savagely unleash gems such as:


FLAPDOODLE


bona-fide meaning:

flapdoodle, n. Informal. nonsense, bosh, rubbish, twaddle, balderdash, stuff and nonsense, rot, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks.


but sounds like:
vaginal flatulence.

Cupcake Adventure Club

photo (AND BAKING!) by Hannah J. Simpson

My pal Sarandopolous and I have decided that there are not enough cupcake blogs. We're gonna start one soon. It will be called Cupcake Adventure Club. Watch this space for updates.

What You're Not Supposed to Hear

At one point, Ed Droste suggested that le bear di grizzly used Veckatimest as an opportunity to flesh out ideas that had been floating about for some time, some perhaps pre Yellow House. Pressure is immense to progress, to always deliver, unleash "the new," a force of creative energy which has never been imagined before -- this is of course, impossible, and I think we can all agree that the pressure to appear original contributes to an insecurity that haunts many artists, on the hour, every hour. My first impression of the leak was "whoa, this sounds way closer to Horn of Plenty than anything else" but it's not that I was merely reacting to the low, compressed quality. Literally, the leak sounds like something you're not supposed to be hearing, a fly on the wall type of experience.

What makes Grizzly Bear a unique act is their heightened self-consciousness. Song writing appears especially cautious. Criticisms about their lack of strength melodically are missing the point. Droste and Rossen are often amplifying simple, tiny gestures, achieving to avoid over-done, obvious notions of romantic love, loss, and the landfill of ideas that pollute much music today. The result are these secret-self revelations that burst with color, expansive space and texture. Yellow House made Grizzly Bear much of a music-box band. Especially with a song like Marla, the work encompasses this closet-of-curiosities quality, like an attic antique covered in cobwebs and years of dust. Thus, Yellow House often amplifies what you're not supposed to hear on a pop record: creaks of stairs, doors, and shadows--even if this is not literal, it strongly evokes this ghostly ambiguity.

Veckatimest irons out these ambiguities for the most part, like a dusting of the dust, preparation for display of the antique that's been left unearthed for years. This is very much a pop record, one with less thoughtful meandering, more vocal risks, but most definitely an ironing-out of idiosyncrasies (again, that maybe the quality of the leak)--but on the other hand, has very carnival-esque / cabaret-sounding colors, a record that fluctuates between small and vast spaces through use of vocal drones and a girl's choir.

I can't wait for this on vinyl. I don't even have a record player.

LEAK!

Eddie D. spoke about the ordained leak of their much awaited Veckatimest but dude, that be like a flash! Thanks to my favorite internet-ninja, J, who led me to the treasure, most of the downloading options have been disabled but you're welcome to stream most of the album here:


Ear Teasers


Personally, I'm really attached to the live recordings already, so these tracks kinda sound extraterrestrial. Ed claims these leaks are rough and I'm inclined to believe him. Darn you, Grizzly Bear! There's no way I'm being productive tonight, I'm all stuck on the stream... And what's this about two shows at Town Hall at the end of May? But why won't they let me buy all the tickets NOOOOWWWW?





P.S. Have you read reviews of BAM show? BARF. It was like the display of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond at The Great Exhibition in 1851. Ok it's gorgeous, but, really, that's it? Them boys draft some diamonds, but they should have used Nico Muhly's skillz a bit more. I itched for more interpretation rather than album regurgitation.

For real coverage of the GB Bros/Final Fantasy symphonic spectacle
surf to:

My Kinda Partaay

...because I'm crap at real coverage, probably because I'm not a real person.


I AM A ROBOT!

Wouldn't that make you better at real coverage?

SHHHHH!

Brooklyn Philharmonic Presents:
Final Fantasy + Grizzly Bear
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
February 28th


It's really hard to not look a-hoot at these sort of functions. I can't help but stare at all the hippity-hop darlings in their tailored threads and perfectly unkempt hair. I'm waiting outside for my pals amid the mass of pavement flowers ornamenting the scene and it feels as though my neck involuntarily extends to the right, for no particular reason and who do I spot? It's Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear, returning to the venue from a jaunty 'hood stroll. You can imagine what this episode is doing to my already unhealthy fascination with the handsome devil.

We slide into the balcony just as the lights go down. Mr. Final Fantasy, Owen Pallet, besides some awkward stage banter with the BP conductor, seems right at home with orchestral support and his sharp-crooner vocals mirror everything his recordings offer--crystalline constructs of delicate song presents. Grizzly Bear are equally musically strong, but they seem a bit nervous. I purchased balcony seats because I wanted to yell obscene phrases of jubilation but there's something about this venue that is making me want to act all golden-star. My head pulsates with pain, probably because the rest of my body really wants to dance whilst the circumstances disallow any motion whatsoever. Much of the set list included a nice mix of oldies and newies + the newies gimme hives for the new album which isn't released until May which is SO FAR AWAY.

I'm sure the orchestral support rightly suited Pallet's oeuvre, but it kind of ironed out Grizzly Bear's creases, which I missed. This difference was most apparent in the encore, which featured the quartet on their own--thank goodness for that. Usually, the make-shift situation of a live setting forces them to compress their micro-symphonies into something almost entirely different, which often eliminates expectations in a positive way--but there was something easy-bake about having a orchestra at their beck 'n call that I'm not sure was flattering. Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly beautiful, but in some ways it resembled a type of Grizzly Bear musak more than I had anticipated. I was hoping for more witty anecdotal audience interaction, but Nico Muhly's costume changes served more than enough comic relief. I love Nico, but the boy needs my stylistic services, like STAT. So I didn't dissolve into molecules like I thought I might, just got a mother-headache. That Chris Taylor looks mighty fine with a tenor sax, don't he?