Eoin Hennessy | Magazine Music Editor
After a three-year gap, Brooklyn four–piece, Grizzly Bear, have returned. Following the success of 2009’s Veckatimest, the group began to tour the world and started recording Shields in late 2010. From the first track, it’s already very clear that Grizzly Bear have tried to change their sound. “Sleeping Ute” starts with a confusing time signature followed by a very un-Grizzly-Bear-esque clunky guitar. However, lead singer Edward Droste’s vocals haven’t changed a bit in the past eight years since Grizzly Bear was formed. The third track on the album, “Adelma” sounds like something Tim Hecker would produce and also reinforces the reason why Grizzly Bear are signed to the legendary Warp records. Despite all of this, Grizzly Bear’s newest album, just like their Electric Picnic performance, is extremely monotonous. While the album is only 48 minutes long, it begins to feel like an eternity once you get half way through the sixth song, “A Simple Answer”. In spite of the fact that the album is beautifully arranged and the production is quite clean, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of originality or excitement. Tracks like “Yet Again” and “The Hunt” sound like a really bad Thom Yorke side project, while the second last track “Half Gate” just becomes grinding after hearing so much mopeyness from the album already. That’s not to say that every song is full of melancholy, “Gun-Shy” contains a great ‘70s sounding keyboard and an intricate guitar line. The vocals on the album, while being quite hard to make out, seem to display fairly intelligent lyricism. After the three-year waiting period, Grizzly Bear fans are probably going to love this album despite its averageness. However, to the average Joe it will sound just like another album to toss into the Indie/Folk Rock category. Grizzly Bear certainly have the potential to do something great, as was seen with Veckatimest, however Shields just can’t live up to that standard.
