Grizzly Bear
Sleeping Ute
Warp Records / Playground

The grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), also known as the silvertip bear, the grizzly, or the North American brown bear, is a subspecies of brown bear (Ursus arctos) that generally lives in the uplands of western North America. This subspecies is thought to descend from Ussuri brown bears which crossed to Alaska from eastern Russia 100,000 years ago, though they did not move south until 13,000 years ago. (wikipedia)

"Sleeping Ute" is the first song off the up-coming Grizzly Bear album, Shields. They'll release their first album (and their 4th album proper since the 2004 debut, Horn of Plenty; which was a sort of a solo album by Ed Droste) in 3 years in mid September. 2009's Veckatimest really placed the band on the map, leading to a most deserved hype and wall-to-wall critical acclamation of that year. I guess it must be difficult to follow up an album which ended up in most 'Top 10' lists of 2009 (such as New York Times, SPIN, NME, Uncut, Pitchfork Media, Stereogum, Rough Trade Shops, plus...).

"Sleeping Ute" proves well for the up-coming record. It rocks more than usual for a GB song, sounding more electric, more radiant, somehow. It's got the 'trademark' GB signs: rolling, building, coming in waves - for then to ebb and fade to white. If the other 9 tracks of the new album hold the same quality level, there'll be a new classic born. Maybe a competitor to Veckatimest, which (in March this year) The Wall Street Journal declared to be "...one of the best rock discs of this century so far..."

Copyright © 2012 Håvard Oppøyen