Tuesday, July 29, 2008
By John Benson
The band is looking to release its follow-up to its 2006 album next year.
An Urban Outfitters and an art gallery.
Those are the venue locations of Grizzly Bear’s first two Northeast Ohio shows. This time around is equally odd for the New York City indie rock act, which was handpicked by Radiohead as its opener for the band’s highly anticipated summer tour that rolls through Ohio on Monday with a date at Blossom Music Center.
“It’s always been kind of a joke with our band like ‘Yeah, we’re going to go on tour with Radiohead someday,’” said Grizzly Bear singer-guitarist Ed Droste, calling from Brooklyn, N.Y. “And everyone would laugh, like that’s the most unrealistic thing ever. And then they released their new album [‘In Rainbows’] and our booking agent submitted us for it. We didn’t hear anything for a long time.
“Then the next thing we heard they chose us. I guess they don’t even take submissions and they pick whomever they want. I still can’t believe it. Like I have a weird fear and there’s going to be a last-minute cancellation. It’s so surreal.”
Droste said he heard from rock act Liars, which opened for Radiohead on its first touring leg, that the green-conscious Thom Yorke and company provide all opening band members with a recyclable water bottle.
Laughed Droste, “We’ll definitely be on the green wagon.”
For roughly the past year, Grizzly Bear has been on the buzz wagon with its sophomore 2006 effort “Yellow House” exposing the Brooklyn-based act’s unique songwriting craft and idiosyncratic lo-fi sound — electronics, piano, banjo, woodwinds, strings, flutes — that seemingly creates atmospheric and gently sonic mood pieces.
“I’m really pleased with the way that things have progressed for us,” Droste said. “I think it’s been bizarrely really steady and sort of under the radar. I don’t know, someone might argue otherwise but the album came out and it wasn’t like a huge explosion and then it steadily sold more and more and then bigger and bigger opportunities came.”
Industry adulation landed Grizzly Bear on opening tours for TV on the Radio and Feist, as well as this past spring performing as Paul Simon’s backing band for a series of Big Apple dates. The band even played a show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. To say all eyes are on this quartet is an understatement.
Up next for the group is its highly anticipated follow-up, which it hopes to release in April 2009. Among the new songs already getting stage time are the upbeat “While You Wait for the Others” (offered as a free MP3 download from www.grizzly-bear.net) and the tentatively titled “Two Weeks.”
Considering all of the other recent indie band de jours that have come and faded away (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, TV on the Radio, Tape n’ Tapes), it’s a delicate time for Grizzly Bear, with Droste cognizant of the expectations and pressures associated with the band’s next album.
“I really want to avoid it being ‘Yellow House, Pt. Two,’ which I think it will successfully not be,” Droste said. “And I don’t want it to sound stale. I want it to sound like us. I think we’re heading in the right direction, and I’m pretty optimistic. I’m excited about it. We’re all just really cautious about taking our time and making sure it’s the best thing we can do musically.”