Grizzly Bear - Painted ruins

Finally new Grizzly Bear !

New track is amazing, very catchy with beautiful lyrics, perfect for the summer and a break from all the dark electronic music.
strangely not on warp but RCA Records

There is also another new track as well. Fucking August...

edit: here is the other released track

Start to finish that was excellent. I've probably had more indie rock albums creep into my favorite albums this year than any other in a long time and I can add this one to the list.

Well worth the wait with this band. 

Need to revisit their older stuff but part of what I like about their sound is how they've incorporated synths without going overboard: either into disco/dance territory, or EDM appealing beats, or PB&R&B territory like so many other of their peers in Brooklyn. 

I think this is a really strong record. I feel like they have grown a lot on this one. The drummer is more in the forefront on many of these arrangements too, i think he is genius! They are really great live too, i hope to see them again one day. On this tour they are in my town the same night as Mogwai and i can't miss that.

Always loved the singing on Grizzly Bear albums. Definitely deserve the attention they get. This sounds like a fun one.

Excited to check this out later. The singles sounded promising :)

  On 8/18/2017 at 4:50 PM, joshuatx said:

Need to revisit their older stuff but part of what I like about their sound is how they've incorporated synths without going overboard: either into disco/dance territory, or EDM appealing beats, or PB&R&B territory like so many other of their peers in Brooklyn. 

Agreed. Grandaddy are pretty good at that too.

I wasn't that excited by the two promo tracks, sounded a bit too much like more of the same. The album as a whole is a bit more interesting though, particularly like "cut-out", the closing track is something different as well. I liked the last album the first few times I listened to it as well though, but quickly grew bored of it, so will need to give this one a few more listens to see how it stacks up.

Never quite got into this band but I've heard Neighbours ​a few times this week on the radio, and thinking that's a very good track indeed

Absolutely brilliant album! So glad I waited on the 4 singles and can enjoy the album as a whole. What a shitty roll out, but worth abstaining. Chris Bear's drumming is off the charts on this one!

Every track is good to great here. First "indie" album I have been into in a looong time.

10/10

Yep, real good. Picking up the vinyl next time I'm in town fer sher.

Im so pissed I didnt buy the vinyl. Is there a special edition one for this?

Album is very front loaded

  On 8/18/2017 at 10:28 PM, jules said:

Im so pissed I didnt buy the vinyl. Is there a special edition one for this?

Nope, just a standard. 180g w/ gatefold though!

  On 8/21/2017 at 11:32 PM, zaphod said:

Album is very front loaded

Uh, dude... Glass Hillside?!?!?!

I thought it was front loaded at first too. Listened all weekend, not the case for me anymore. Its fantastic. Neighbors and Sky Took Hold are killer.

definitely not front loaded, cut-out is one of my favourites. have listened to this a lot now, definitely a lot better than the previous one. 

nah i'm not feeling it. weaker than shields. the singles are all good but it lost me around track 6. rossen needs to get out of this band and make more solo/department of eagles stuff. he's extremely talented but limited by this boring band.

  On 8/22/2017 at 3:08 AM, zaphod said:

nah i'm not feeling it. weaker than shields. the singles are all good but it lost me around track 6. rossen needs to get out of this band and make more solo/department of eagles stuff. he's extremely talented but limited by this boring band.

Shields is also very good, but a different beast. Disagree about Rossen being the only talent here. The entire band brings it on this record.

Rossen is definitely my favorite element of the group, but i would rather he makes his own tracks AND continue with Grizzly Bear. I think everyone in the group is very talented and adds a lot. Shields kept getting better and better to me over the years since it was released. I want to support the band but am avoiding spending my $ on (non AFX/Ae) vinyl so i was thinking about going the download route until i saw i could get the CD on amazon for $8. I still buy 5-10 CD's every year but it feels weirder each time.

yeah this is a great album.

It's not front-heavy, I think the reason it feels that way is the super flat mastering that just gets totally fatiguing half way through it.  It's a weird choice, because the musicianship here is top-notch and I want to hear more space between it.  Drums being so crunchy-up-front remind me of indie singles from the '00s, but why here?

I don't know if I like the production, but the music is so good I'll swallow it.

i'll have to listen to it more but for now it just sounds like the dying gasp of a band with no ideas. a lot of the music here feels pieced together like they had clips and exchanged them via dropbox or something and then patched an album together around that. i mean they've always been a meandering band but this thing is very unfocused. they sound extremely tired.

apparently that's how the album started, with a cloud storage folder with loops and rough ideas, presumably they fleshed it all out in the studio after that though. 

still liking it very much, also listened to Shields again yesterday, only a few good tracks on that, still don't think much of that one.

watmm has great indie rock taste :) :)

  On 8/25/2017 at 12:35 PM, caze said:

apparently that's how the album started, with a cloud storage folder with loops and rough ideas, presumably they fleshed it all out in the studio after that though. 

 

still liking it very much, also listened to Shields again yesterday, only a few good tracks on that, still don't think much of that one.

Yeah, with Shields I only really liked Speak In Rounds, Yet Again, and Gun-Shy. I really liked those songs, but the rest didn't work for me.

I like pretty much all of the tracks here, to varying degrees.

I think this is shaping up as a bit of a classic for me. Always quite liked grizzly bear but they never really blew me away until this LP. The drum heavy production really helps I reckon, but the songs here are both catchy as hell as well as going in some pretty odd directions melodically.