Dismal, Bleak and Grizzly Bear's Yellow House

It’s been a weird day and a half to be honest. Last night I found myself running/jogging home from off near the loop for a brisk thirty minute stride. I feel…well, wait a minute that’s for the journal. Haha, I feel, well, I’m not sure, a bit up against it. But well, Ive been wanting to share some thoughts on this album for a while, here they are.

I used to have this old phone that I got simply because it was the newest RAZR, a black thin one, and it came with a, gasp, 2 GB SD card! I had some cheap headphones to use and this was a great way to put some nice music on while I headed to school, work, or whatever else it was that needed to get done. I remember finding out about this here album, Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House, and getting a few songs downloaded onto my nice new phone.

As I used it more and more, I didn’t really grasp the nature of the music I was trying to hear. And as sweet as I thought the phone was, it really was, just a flip phone, that was easy in my pocket – I thought it was so awesome to have some easy way to play music too. I heard “Knife” and never really understood the greatness of it until I finally got the CD like a month later, but I distinctly remember hearing the song about 60 times overall and who knows how many more now. It wasn’t the phone that mattered but it helped to finally get me into Yellow House.

There’s something so real about the lyrics and the way they paint this picture of sad heartbreak and betrayal. The song itself stretches into a little over five minutes of swelling chords, scaling guitar and stunning vocal harmonies; the words themselves are succinct and very well, to the point:

“I want you to know, when I look in your eyes
With every blow, comes another lie.

You think its alright (x4)

Can't you feel the knife? (x4)”

Theres a piano melody towards the end, after he’s asked if he/she can feel the knife. It’s about how you can look someone in the eyes and they’re lying right back? The second part, I’m not sure if he's asking or simply pointing out the obvious. Part of me says half and half but I mean, obviously they (the person causing the harm) think it’s nice. The knife doesn’t come until the end but by then, it's already done damage. The way it starts, with a tapping nature; I love the way he sings the opening lines, especially the first one: so yearning, so demanding. He's wanting to ensure he/she knows how mean and wrong she did him. It's surely a kiss off song and the one that got the album huge.


As I'm writing this, I realize how entirely too safe it is to write about this song so I'm gonna include "Easier" as well. By now I'm really in love with a few songs and then I finally buy the vinyl and it's my first time hearing it. Rumbling and soaring through the sounds, the drums charge through and it sounds amazingly spectral and all-encompassing at the same time. They flash from heavy, string-laden, classical frames into pulsing, driving pop/rock frames that both contrast and compliment each other. And it really boasts the dark and chilly and scary house they recorded in and which the album is named after; with still, a warm coating resonating over all of it.

Sure, Grizzly Bear is huge now, I guess. Who knows how popular they really are. But man, I love it enough that the year it came out I threw it on the as the ‘sixth best album that year’ but I mean who, besides arbitrary me, cares. What I do know is they sound spectacular on this album. - Bryan