Grizzly Bear interview
What:
Grizzly Bear interview
Who:
Luke Benge speaks to Chris Taylor
Where:
All good record stores
On:
Warp / Inertia
Here's a band! Ethereal, psychedelic pop infused with a tidbit of Gregorian chant, texturally rich, dense, colourful, not too gay, a little bit gay. These dudes don't fuck around at band practice, so to speak... Chris Taylor (bass/clarinet/flute/vocalist/producer) imparts upon me a couple of ‘fun facts' from the Seattle Airport.
LB: Grizzly Bear started as Ed Droste's solo project how did you guys get roped into being involved?
CT: It's weird to be in Seattle cause it's where I'm from and I was a really serious Jazz Saxophone player. Then I moved to New York to pursue jazz and then I decided I didn't wanna do that and I didn't know what the hell to do. I play saxophone, clarinet and flute, I'm not gonna get out there and be in the E Street Band playing with Bruce Springsteen! So me and Bear (Drummer Chris Bear) both transferred out of the music department into the audio engineering department to do something different. We were just both fed up with the jazz thing. We began playing in this noisy post-punk semi industrial band called Fast Fourier just to have some fun and I started learning bass and I was really bad, I'm still pretty bad!
LB: You're no Flea that's for sure. So after whoring yourself about in a stylistic sense Grizzly Bear was the next natural step?
CT: Ed had recorded Horn of Plenty (first Grizzly Bear album) and then Bear stepped in to help him finish that and I listened to it and it was like, "Wow this is gorgeous music and there's all these fun weird sounds in it," and I was so intrigued. Then when they wanted to make a band out of it to play a show they asked me and I was like, "Dude I'd love to do that." And the three of us played a handful of shows around New York for a couple of months and then asked Dan (Rossen) to be a part of the band because he's really talented! I couldn't do everything myself and no one really played guitar.
LB: Your vocal harmonies are impressive and I don't mean in a gay way. As a band how do you compose and arrange them?
CT: Yeah we just sort of build it, each person has maybe an idea for apart, we're singing and we're like, "Maybe I hear this and that kinda works and on top of that we can do this. That's how the harmonies were built on all of Veckatimest. With Yellow House some stuff Dan wrote like 'Little Brother' and 'Easier' with crazy dense harmony arrangements a lot of that he had all figured out beforehand. But these days it's been a lot more fun to just feel it out at a more organic pace.
LB: Has it been a wild ride? Since Veckatimest came out things been going pretty ape shit right?
CT: Ha. It's been such a positive feeling ape shit, there have been constantly surprises coming about but I feel really lucky and I'm really excited so I can't really say that I'm feeling weathered by it. I've been recording a lot. So that's kind of been my life when I'm not on tour. Straight back to the studio every time I get off tour, it's literally like I was in the studio the entire time I was off from this last tour to this one. I'm producing Jamie Lidell's record now.
LB: Fucking crazy that's awesome.
CT: Yeah man he's so great! Oh yeah we're having so much fun this record is going to be amazing, it's such a departure.
LB: Would you agree the best thing about music is the way it sounds?
CT: Yeah definitely. I like that layer of unexpectedness. If you have that initial first impression of a song where it feels like that really exciting organic beautiful unfolding then every time you listen to it that's gonna be in the back of your mind. For me it's sort of like my way to build a happier community, make people feel happy about something good, there's so much stuff you can get bummed out on, music has this neat way of reaching into peoples pants a little bit it's like the coolest fucking thing in the world, its so fun!
LB: Even though you guys play emotional girls blouse music do you still party hard?
CT: Ha. I'm up for anything man, we'll just play it by ear you know, come and say hi if you can! We don't make ourselves that scarce, we're not Motley Crue.
Genre: Other
Release: Interview
Keywords: Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
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