GRIZZLY BEAR
On January 5, 2014, Grizzly Bear performed at the iconic Sydney Opera House, bringing to a close a two-year cycle of writing, recording, and touring that had brought them to new creative and commercial heights while exposing fault lines within the band itself. The recording sessions for 2012’s Shields had been fraught with false starts and misfires, resulting in strained relationships and a general weariness that carried over into touring. But by the time they left the stage that night, Grizzly Bear was a different band—closer, tighter, healed. Somehow, perhaps by sheer tyranny of will, they had adapted. Exhausted but triumphant, they were back in each other’s good graces and had never sounded better as a unit, recalls bassist and producer Chris Taylor. The time was right to channel that momentum directly into their next album.
“I remember being like, ‘I know as soon as we go home, we won’t be talking to one another, and we’ll go into our lives and just do our own things,’” he says, his words tumbling out in rapid succession. “‘Okay, cool. We should all have some time like that. But what if in three months we just got back in touch, so that it just doesn’t totally die in the meantime?’ And I remember the guys were like, ‘Yeah... maybe.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, this is not happening.’”
And for nearly a year-and-a-half nothing much happened. The band did exactly what Taylor feared and retreated to their corners, scattering from their previous homebase of Brooklyn to Los Angeles (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ed Droste), upstate New York (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rossen), Berlin (Taylor), and Long Island (drummer Chris Bear), respectively. They had plenty of reasonable excuses, of course. There were marriages and divorces, babies born, and Bear and Taylor would soon relocate to Los Angeles, as well, with Rossen landing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But there weren’t any new songs. What Taylor didn’t know was just how close the band was to not getting back together at all.
“I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to function in the band, to be honest. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to write songs for the band or sing in the band anymore.”
– Daniel Rossen
That much would have seemed unthinkable to most anyone who has witnessed the quartet’s steady rise from precocious 20-somethings to one of the most acclaimed American bands of the last decade. With four now canonized full-length releases in their catalog, they have built their career album-by-album and tour-by-tour, counting everyone from Jay-Z and Beyoncé to Radiohead as fans. All of this they have accomplished without the aid of gimmicks or the built-in momentum of genre movements, remaining four smart, nice guys who don’t seem drawn to drama. The performance at the Sydney Opera House should have
