Bear Necessities

Never believe the promises of a musician. They’ll only break your heart. And so it was that your correspondent didn’t end up circling the air carnival-style with Daniel Rossen at Stradbally. It’s pre-Electric Picnic, he’s in Brooklyn, I’m in Dublin, and I’ve just suggested that he and the other three-quarters of Grizzly Bear join me for a ferris wheel interview at the festival. “Absolutely!” he laughs. “That sounds good, let’s make that happen!”

It never comes to pass, but maybe he saw right through me – I’m just trying to one up Stephen Colbert in the ‘unlikely interview setting’ stakes. The band lauded to high indie heaven since the release of third album Veckatimest are back after a two-year break and chose to mark their return with a performance on The Colbert Report, talking beforehand to the faux right-wing comedic host in a rowing boat dubbed the USS Intrepid.
“That is about the best thing you can do. I love Colbert, he’s a gem. He’s an American hero! So sitting that close to him, it was definitely very hard to conceal the giddiness. For the first performance since 2010 to be on television was pretty intense. A little bit scary at times. A good way to start though, throwing ourselves right back into it. Might as well go all the way, right away!”
The period apart was one of both recovery and self-exploration.
“The success of Veckatimest resulted in a lot of touring and a lot of pressure in a way that we hadn’t experienced before. It was exciting, but also really exhausting. We got to the stage where we thought, ‘We have to step away for a second and not be a band for a while’.”
Solo projects surfaced, with Rossen – the band’s co-voice along with founder Ed Droste – slipping out an EP in March.
“When I did stuff on my own I made it really low pressure and only did a few shows, barely did any interviews. I just went, ‘Put a record out!’ and left it alone. Part of that’s because I’m not particularly good at promoting myself anyway, I tend not to do it.”
So he’s not morphing into a Kanyesque, attention-seeking pop star?
“Nah. Maybe I should go that way... As the years go by, the buttons on my shirt go lower and lower!”
Reconvening with the band, a new spirit of collaboration arose and resulted in Shields, which somehow tops its acclaimed predecessor. It sees Droste and Rossen opening up the creative process to Christopher Bear and Chris Taylor, who also produces.
“We definitely didn’t want to do ‘Veckatimest Part Two’,” Rossen stresses. “And it’s hard. There’s things that we ended up ditching that I would have been happy to release. We had to figure out what kind of music we even wanted to make. We weren’t the same people anymore. And we really aren’t the same band anymore. So we felt we just had to find some common space. I had a bunch of stuff that sounded like the EP and Ed had stuff that sounded totally different. But they didn’t really gel at all, they didn’t make sense. So we scratched most of it and started over.”
After a few false starts, everything came together in Cape Cod, where the group divided into pairs and wrote together. Grizzly Bear are now famous for these escapes from the city.
“Ha, towards the end it feels more like cabin fever but you just keep pushing on!” Rossen laughs. “It’s almost like a ritual for us at this point, we’ve always done that. From the very beginning of the band in, like, 2005, I’d joined and a week later we went on tour. In that week in between we went up to Ed’s grandmother’s in Cape Cod. It was an amazing place, I’d never been before. It was beautiful. We’ve just developed an association with running off, especially to that part of the US, and working in the countryside.”
Daniel was the last to join the band that began as a solo venture for Droste. He’s also the only member from the West Coast. It’s been said their sound is a meeting point between the two sides of America.
“Well, I always felt like a stranger in Los Angeles, I don’t know if I really have a West Coast sensibility. I remember Pitchfork mentioning West Coast meeting East Coast anxiety or something like that! Which is appropriate given the vocal harmonies, and then the sense of dread. I always felt like I belonged somewhere else. But yeah, maybe I have some repressed West Coast spirit that makes its way out in the music somehow! I don’t like to admit it but it’s probably true.”

Shields is out now on Warp Records.