Veckatimest

With all eyes on Grizzly Bear for the follow-up to their praised-to-the-skies second album Yellow House, third outing Veckatimest was a make-or-break moment for the band. Fortunately for all concerned (except perhaps for some stubborn pack of Grizzly haters), the ursine ensemble has proven itself to be fully up to the challenge. The heady cocktail of folktronica production touches, hazy freak-folk leanings, and ambitious experimentalism (back in the '90s, folks called it post-rock) that floated through the luminous Yellow House achieves its most potent blend here. Ambient meets acoustic in a bewitching sonic space that's alternately percolating and poignant. Hypnotic acoustic guitar patterns, haunting vocal harmonies, adventurous song structures -- no you haven't wandered into a Fleet Foxes/Animal Collective split single by mistake, you've simply happened onto Grizzly Bear's finest moment to date. Veckatimest (fyi: it's an uninhabited island off the coast of singer-songwriter Edward Droste's native Massachusetts) is a fully realized musical statement that's as rewarding on first listen, when you're just getting acquainted with it's dizzying array of soul-tickling textures, as it is later on when you're able to focus in on the actual content. (Hey, remember content?)