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A Real to Reel Interview: Grizzly Bear
A variety of sounds, recording in a ‘Yellow House’

By Dan Ochwat

I know, I know, another great band from Brooklyn. But Grizzly Bear isn’t your TV on the Radio, your Hold Steady or your Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — to name a few. This mellow outfit blesses us with gorgeous songs, implementing banjo, autoharp, xylophone, lap steel, glockenspiel, flute and electronic notes all chiming in at different times. The music is beautiful and melancholy and at times haunting, like when the crashing guitars strike at about the two-minute-mark of their track “Lullabye.” If forced for comparison: Elliott Smith meets Animal Collective.

The band plays Subterranean Feb. 9. The excitement is in seeing how the band will translate its complex songs live. The band consists of Ed Droste, Chris Bear, Daniel Rossen and Chris Taylor. Droste conceived the band’s first album “Horn of Plenty” in his bedroom. Drummer Chris Bear (last name coincidence) helped finalize it. Then, the larger band formed and created one of the best albums of 2006 (No. 5 on my list) called “Yellow House.” Essentially the full band’s debut, the album was recorded in the house Droste grew up in just outside Boston, near Cape Cod.

I spoke with Bear by phone from his home in Frankfort, Ill. The Lincoln-Way High School graduate, 24, went to New York when he was 18. He was home for the holidays, excited about the arrival of Jet Blue coming to O’Hare. It means he may get home more often.

Q: Do you miss anything about Chicago, compared to your Brooklyn life now?
A: I mean, I miss my friends and family. But growing up in the suburbs, I can’t say I have a good sense of what city life in Chicago would be like, except for when I stay with my friends for three days, which is a different context. That’s usually more hedonistic, I guess. I do really like the pace here. It’s the same reason I live in Brooklyn. I really appreciate neighborhoods. I think Chicago has good, solid neighborhoods.

Q: What are your favorite hangouts in Chicago?
A: I’ve always gone to the Bottle (Empty Bottle). I really like that place. I have really great memories of awesome shows there. When we come in, we’re playing at Subterranean. From what I’ve heard, it should be cool.

Q: It’s in a cool area (in Wicker Park on North Avenue at the intersection of Milwaukee and Damen).
A: The crotch. I don’t know who wrote that term, but I feel like that term has spread, calling that area the crotch. It’s kind of perfect, all of these legs meeting right up to it.

Q: It’s really perfect for me, because I got arrested there for public urination.
A: (Laughing)You got arrested for peeing there? Oh God.

Q: Yep, right outside Subterranean actually. So, how did you find your way into Grizzly Bear?
A: I moved to New York six years ago, and two and a half years ago, I met Ed (Droste) through a friend. He had all of these recordings and needed some help crystallizing some things, making things flow better, pop better, mix better.

Q: That’s the “Horn of Plenty” album you’re talking about?
A: Yeah, and most of it was done before I met him. We changed some elements and made it more of a whole album. When I met him, he really didn’t have many intentions of trying to do much with it. He sent it to a couple people. But it snowballed into the record coming out and us getting a live thing together. It was me and him, and there are so many sounds on the record that we needed more than the two of us, or it needed to be completely different.

My roommate is Chris Taylor. He was the first person who came to my mind. We had been playing music for a while in different groups. He’s very good at — if he doesn’t know how to play an instrument — he’s very good about, “let me figure it out, and I’ll make it work.” He’s primarily a saxophone player but, for instance, he can play a bass sound off a clarinet and affect it. That was right along the lines of what we were looking for, to be able to totally recreate sounds in a roundabout way.

Then Daniel (Rossen) came along. We had known him for a while. He was another very obvious person for the band. We had made attempts to collaborate in the past, and then this happened to work. He already had a lot of older songs to bring to the table.

Q: This was all still before the “Yellow House” album?
A: Yeah, the band formed after “Horn of Plenty.” We figured out our band for the first time on a tour as opposed to a rehearsal room. It ended up working in a cool way. A lot of the songs changed dramatically from what they were on the record and by the end of the tour even. The live show is so different because “Yellow House,” much like “Horn of Plenty,” is still a very multi-tracked album, (and) there are tons of sounds and parts that we can’t re-create.

Q: That was a major question of mine. I was curious how you were going to translate your sound live.
A: I actually like that whole process. There are some songs we’ve never actually played as a band. It just exists as a recording.

Q: Which songs?
A: “Easier,” the first track on “Yellow House.” We’ve made three or four different attempts, might have even played it once at a show, but it wasn’t something we played before recording it.
It’s a process. We figure out what parts are important, who can play what and still make it sound full in the same way, yet not all of the elements can be there. In some ways, it means we have to completely rework the song. The way we do “Little Brother” live is entirely different. It has the same lyrics and melody, but the chord changes are completely different. The whole groove is different.

Q: As a full band then, how did you guys work together to make “Yellow House?”
A: It was an interesting process. We spent a month outside of Boston in a house Ed grew up in. Personally, I didn’t have any idea how it was going to go. There wasn’t a real plan of action. Dan had a lot of ideas and songs that he had written; he had been working out a lot of ideas and arrangements in his head. Then Ed worked on one or two things. Then there was stuff we had already been working on in our live set. A lot of ideas came after we left the house, too. We kind of put it away for two months, took a break, and came back to it.
It wasn’t an easy process. We all had different ideas of what we wanted. It was good because we ended up learning a lot about each other and how we work best together. Next time around, maybe it will be an easier process, but I still have no idea how that’s gonna go (he laughs).

Q: Once the new album was finished, you toured like crazy again. You toured with TV on the Radio and had a European tour where your van got broken into. Did they ever catch the bastards?
A: No, I think it’s a problem there. We’ve heard a lot of stories about Brussels. It can really happen anywhere though. It’s weird, I keep hearing about more and more bands getting robbed. I heard Tapes ‘n Tapes got jacked in Australia, Subtle wrote us and said they got robbed in Spain.

Q: It’s hard enough living on the road as a band, and then to deal with that, plus, Daniel’s dad was sick.
A: Yeah, Daniel’s father isn’t doing so well.

Q: How did you come together at that point?
A: It was a huge headache. We were beyond just being completely bummed, we all knew this was the sign that we needed to go home. It was intense. We’ll work it out. We have to go out on a shopping spree.

Q: You’ve really become one of those bands that people are excited to hear more from. With the new album, do you feel pressure to meet expectations on the next album?
A: I don’t think we’ve actually thought about it that much. I think we have personal high hopes. We’re all very critical of what we do. I think, whether there is an outside expectation or not, we’d be hyper-critical about it. But, it feels really good that people are responding to the record. From talking to a lot of people, it’s a slow burn for them.

Q: I do find it amazing that you’ve accomplished the popularity that you have with a percussion-heavy, hazy band. That’s an achievement in itself.
A: Maybe we’ll just start writing pop songs.

Q: Well, writing pop songs is the most easily accessible music that you can do and gain instant popularity, whereas doing “Lullabye”...
A: No, I know. It’s kind of completely weird to me.

Q: I love that though. It gives me more faith in the music community.
A: We’ll still be doing music that challenges us and stretch what people will listen to. Not that we’re trying to make difficult music, because all of us love pop music, it’s just our way of doing it.

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