The first time I heard Christopher Bear’s drumming was in the
band Earl Greyhound—a guitar-driven power-rock trio whose style
edges up against hard-hitting, chest-thumping Zeppelin blooze. Imagine
my surprise when I saw Bear a couple years later manning the kit for
Grizzly Bear—a band that had already chosen its name before he
joined—playing restrained but fully dynamic percussion parts that
set my notions of drumming on its ear. Eschewing superfluous toms and
even a bass drum, Bear shuttled from snare to floor tom, using just a
sprinkling of cymbal, switching from brush to stick to mallet, dialing
up cavernous echo from an effects sideboard. His drum parts were as
much of the composition as the band’s Zombies-esque four-part
harmonies, or its charmingly gloomy songwriting, which at times sounded
like an Edward Gorey drawing put to music.
Bear’s drumming is my personal favorite thing about Grizzly Bear, a
band that has no shortage of qualities that could become other people’s
personal favorite things. Some may be drawn to bassist Chris Taylor’s
huge swarm of effects pedals, which he manipulates with the dexterity
of a submarine technician. Some may admire the classic sound of Daniel
Rossen’s hollow-body guitar, a wooden echo straight from the Django
Reinhardt era, filtered through a history of not so much rock ‘n’ roll
but a parallel course of surreal Hollywood soundtracks. And some will
swoon over Ed Droste’s crystalline, creamy voice and the foppish,
Wildean angst of his stage presence.
Grizzly Bear’s dreamlike third album, Veckatimest, sees the
balance shift away from Droste, who started Grizzly Bear as a solo
project, to Rossen’s newly dominant voice and songwriting. This comes
on the heels of Rossen’s successful Department of Eagles side project,
which at one point contained both Bear and Taylor in its ranks. As a
whole, Veckatimest betrays Rossen’s taste for tangled, silky
gossamer. It’s Droste who hosts the album’s best earworm, the lurching,
splendid “Two Weeks,” in which a choppy, seasick piano gives way to the
wide-open melody of its chorus, aided by glissando spacecraft synths
and endless waves of choirboy harmonies. And of course, Chris Bear’s
phenomenal drumming pushes the whole thing forward.
For the Mercury‘s interview with Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste, click here.