"The Hunt" never finds its mark, but still serves as the centerpiece that turns the album's backside into the chiding "A Simple Answer" and haunting, drowsy hallucination of "What's Wrong." More than anything, Shields feels like a deliberate maturation of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, trading adolescent angst for an older disillusion and heartbreak.
"Speak in Rounds" pitches into a fast-strummed anxiety of loneliness, while "Yet Again" booms behind Drost's soft, deceptive pleas. "Move on, let's face that all you trust is a cynical phrase/No time, no place, when all you hope is that everything breaks," offers "A Simple Answer." The entire album fights against impulse, restrained yet restless. Shields Review by Heather Phares Grizzly Bear were gone for a few years after Veckatimest, but the amount of extracurricular projects they tackled during that time - Chris Taylor s work with CANT, Daniel Rossen s solo EP Silent Hour/Golden Mile, and the bands reconfiguring of their own songs into the Blue Valentine soundtrack - means they never really went away. Instead, the album conducts as an evocative, and often inwardly-turned exploration. The LP carries none of the immediate appeal of a song like "Two Weeks" from 2009's Veckatimest, nor are the signature harmonies between Rossen and keyboardist Ed Droste as prominent as previously. Shields battens down an exposition of everything and nothing all at once. Thundering drums from Chris Bear and sonic turmoil brewed in multi-instrumentalist/bassist Chris Taylor's effects ring against swirling guitar riffs, all coursing through Daniel Rossen's calming croon, and finally settling plaintively like a post-storm wash. So while the band's sound grows more expansive on this new album (much like Bon Iver's eponymous second), fans will still find plenty to enjoy newcomers the same.Grizzly Bear's fourth LP was originally recorded in Marfa, but those sessions were scrapped with the exception of opening missive "Sleeping Ute." Nevertheless, the song sets up Shields with a sweeping sensibility grounded in the subtlety of its details, an epic quality that emerges like a reflection of West Texas' grandiosity accentuated by the necessity of precise minutiae. The more laid-back 'Gun-Shy' drifts along nicely but it's album closer, 'Sun in Your Eyes', an escalating wall of sound, which leaves the biggest impression on the album's second half, apart from perhaps 'A Simple Answer'. The piano-led 'The Hunt' could have come from any recent Radiohead album, while 'What's Wrong's stop-start structure makes it hard to fully immerse yourself in. So while the Field Music-like 'Yet Again' and Foxes-sounding 'Half Gate' stand out from the latter tracks, several are going to take a few listens to really bed in. It builds these barriers sonically, then crashes through them Read Review. And it's that band who bear up to the comparison best, even if their melancholy brand of folk isn't exactly replicated all the time in Grizzly Bear's more experimental style on this offering. Aesthetically, Shields defends Grizzly Bears overarching vision by having its most dissimilar sounds and styles tear each other apart. The former, the album opener, manages to strut its folky stuff rather well before the driving acoustic strum of 'Speak in Rounds' moves us into more fevered Fleet Foxes territory.