The rock band\u2019s fifth album, Painted Ruins, balances mysterious complexity with pure loveliness.<\/b>
\nThe inspiration for \u201cFour Cypresses, \u201d off Grizzly Bear\u2019s spindly and hypnotic new album Painted Ruins, came one night when the singer Daniel Rossen returned to a Los Angeles apartment he\u2019 d been renting to find a man sleeping in his driveway. The next morning, he looked out the window and considered the thought of the man looking at the same thing as him: four cypresses in the neighbor\u2019s yard. \u201cThe basis of the lyric, that\u2019s where it came from\u2014the idea of displacement, and homelessness, really, \u201d Rossen told the podcast Song Exploder . \u201cTrying to connect with someone else\u2019s experience, trying to find shared experience with someone that\u2019s having a much worse time than I am.\u201d
Without that story, the song would be indecipherable lyrically, but still fascinating as music. It begins with an off-kilter groove of pinging keyboard and drums that, via the guiding help of a bassline, eventually steadies itself. Rossen\u2014quavering, mannered, churchly\u2014watches someone watch: \u201cInstead of moving \/ You stared into the wall.\u201d Guitars dive in, at first gentle then knotted; the arrangement grows and heaves, and Rossen sounds agitated. Eventually, though, there\u2019s a sensation of free-falling into a passage of utter prettiness. Maybe that\u2019s the moment when the sight-lines of narrator and subject meet. It\u2019s certainly when all four band members, finally, pull in the same direction.
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Grizzly Bear built a following from 2002 to 2012 by blending experimentalism, atmosphere, and audience-pleasing ambition in a way that typified the best of their era\u2019s indie rock. The songs had common ingredients\u2014two highly distinctive singers, textural guitar influenced by folk and jazz and flamenco, carnivalesque keyboard and classical woodwinds\u2014but no common formula. When they wanted it to, their tinkering could achieve surprising catchiness, as with 2006\u2019s \u201cKnife\u201d or 2009\u2019s \u201cTwo Weeks.\u201d But usually, they followed an internal logic, making music to get lost in.
The foursome has talked about their unease with how the music world has changed in the five years since their fourth album, Shields. With the rise of all-you-can-stream content overload and with the dwindling of robust online venues for fans to obsess and argue over rock music, how many people are going to have the patience for a new Grizzly Bear album? Painted Ruins at first seems to address this conundrum by grabbing attention with insistent, jittery rhythms that seem to promise exciting anthems. But the songs are actually less accessible than they initially appear. Painted Ruins just gets more jagged and inscrutable beneath its surface\u2014though its craftsmanship is never less than impressive.
One thing that does seem clear is that the band is interested in the murky and instinctual way humans negotiate with one another. Singer Ed Droste has said that he doesn\u2019 t want his recent divorce to provide the lens through which the album is viewed, and that\u2019s fair. The listener should apply their own context to subtly devastating songs like \u201cNeighbors, \u201d which seems to describe two people who live near each other but are unable or unwilling to achieve intimacy. Same goes for the kraut-rock thrum of \u201cMourning Sound, \u201d which ascribes a sense of grief to the noises of the world Droste and Rossen sing about: dogs barking, trucks driving. Anyone who has had their perception reshaped by loss, which is to say most anyone, can relate in their gut.
The real drama of these songs is musical, in the push and pull between band members. Grizzly Bear call themselves a \u201cdemocracy\u201d and have said that over the years the recording process has become less frictional, more \u201cadult.\u201d Perhaps that explains the remarkable cohesion of Painted Ruins across a variety of dizzying arrangements and song structures. Through it all, the titular \u201cpaint\u201d seems confined to shades of just a few colors\u2014blue and grey, perhaps. To be sure, the album lacks the arresting tonal change-ups and sneaky hooks of their older material. But there\u2019s a heap of satisfaction to be gained from giving oneself over to these songs\u2019 carefully conjured moods, alternatively contemplative and grandiose. There\u2019s even more fun to be had from zooming in on the fine details: the bird-squall guitars of the standout closer \u201cSky Took Hold, \u201d the glum bass thumbing on \u201cWasted Acres, \u201d the toy-box sounds of \u201cLosing All Sense.\u201d
Whenever it seems the band is getting too tangled up building altars for some indescribable muse, it straightens itself out, delivering the timeless pleasure of tension built and then released. The woozy, prog-touched \u201cThree Rings\u201d justifies its fussiness during a mid-song reverie on par with Radiohead\u2019s most absorbing passages. When the queasy-making carousel of \u201cAquarian\u201d starts to slow down as Rossen repeats \u201cnever reach the end, \u201d you may well hope the ride goes on forever. Such moments of conflict giving way to peace comfortingly suggest, again and again, a resolution of the eternal struggle Droste spoke of: to connect.<\/p>\n

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