Grizzly Bear's sophomore album, "Yellow House," opens up with lead singer Ed Droste crossing the threshold into the house of the title, telling a silently exasperated companion that he knows, "the doors won't close/ the pipes all froze/ just let it go." He knows it doesn't look like much now - it's what real estate agents would refer to as "a real fixer upper" - but let him show you around.
"Yellow House," named after Droste's mother's Cape Cod house where the album was recorded, plays likes a soundtrack to a tour through the old house, a place with its best days behind it, but whose abandoned Ping-Pong tables and pictures of forgotten relatives can gradually reveal glimpses of past summers when it once was surrounded by life.
The album finds Grizzly Bear recreating the musical equivalent of the nooks and crannies of the old yellow house. It's not so much a record of songs as it is an exercise in building an atmosphere. The band builds waves of ghostly Beach Boys harmonies, folk music leanings and meticulously arranged horns and strings which all effortlessly flow into one another as seamlessly as walking between rooms in a home.
At times, this can make "Yellow House" seem like all atmosphere and no substance. Songs like "Marla" and "Little Brother" suffer from the same problem that plagued Grizzly Bear's lo-fi folk debut "Horn of Plenty" (2004).
These songs, much like most of the band's debut, have wonderful, ethereal vocal harmonies, and especially on "Yellow House," a rich, swelling instrumentation. It's obvious that the addition of two new members - multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rossen and clarinetist, flutist and saxophonist Chris Taylor - has brought Grizzly Bear to a new level. The problem is that, in the context of the album, some songs can fade into a mellow haze.
The best songs, including "Colorado" and "On a Neck, On a Spit," rise above the haze and are identifiable songs in their own right. This does not mean they are conventional "verse-chorus-verse" fare; most of the songs switch gears and re-work themselves several times.
For example, "On a Neck, On a Spit" starts off as a front-porch folk song with softly plunking banjo before insistent drumming eventually twists the DNA of the song until it's gotten as close to rocking out as Grizzly Bear gets. The song never feels like it's separated into movements or suites; the progression sounds totally natural.
"Knife," easily the best song Grizzly Bear has recorded, is the song My Morning Jacket was trying to write throughout last year's "Z." Starting off with an otherworldly vocal harmony and restrained electric guitar and drum swirling around the heartbreaking confession that, "I want you to know/ when I look in your eyes/ with every blow/ comes another lie."
Then the drums start counting off the beat, the electric guitar breaks out of its shell, and a saxophone appears. All of a sudden, the song builds to the breaking point and the singer has to ask, "Can't you feel the knife?" It is undoubtedly the same song: The same atmosphere and feeling of betrayal lingers, but it's being looked at from a different angle. Just as immaculately as it transformed into this peak, it settles back down, fading into an understated coda.
If you've ever been in an old house at the right time of day, just as the setting sun comes through the dusty windows, the room might jump to life, and, suddenly, the paint-chipped rocking chair and the dull, creaky floorboards reveal all the history they hold. You could come back the next afternoon, but with the sun behind a cloud or slightly higher in the sky, the dusty old room is just a dusty old room and you're left to wonder if what you saw in it yesterday was ever really even there.
"Yellow House" works the same way: Its mercurial, quicksilver quality makes it impossible to pin down quickly and easily. Each song responds differently when approached from a different vantage, making it seem almost unfair to judge the record so soon after its release.
Maybe someday, when in the right mood and listening to the song at the right time, one of the string parts in "Marla" will suddenly emerge from the atmospheric haze, and a song that felt drab and ordinary will be re-invigorated and alive.
