a staged race has no thunder

As enthralling as their performance was, the short afternoon set Grizzly Bear put up recently during Tokyo’s Summer Sonic festival certainly felt rather insufficient for their glistening chamber pop to properly sink in with their audience. Especially after hearing the ever-wondrous “Lullabye” realized on stage, with the spacey subterranean shadings of the song circulating uneasily in the carnival atmosphere, I surely hoped for the band to do a bit more than just two songs from their Yellow House (2006) album, as great as the new Veckatimest materials are. The opening flourish of “Southern Point” perfectly captures the band’s essence as studio alchemists using the live stage more as a makeshift workshop of sorts, a flurry of ringing guitars calibrated to divine proportions. Their trademark fusion of archaic sound arrangements and unjustifiably beautiful harmonies gathered momentum from “Cheerleader” onwards, with Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen splitting even their turns on lead vocals, I can’t help the feeling the performance was compromised by the fact that Grizzly Bear had to rush through their set and had not enough time to properly stretch out their songs. A major quibble on my part then: which kind of left me there to stand and listen to the band close their set with their canorous rendition of “While You Wait For The Others” with somewhat vacillated emotions (“keeping up with the motions, still occupies our time/ You can hope for some substance, as long as you like”), the band exuding a curious tone of forewarning that felt a little out of place, present but not present.

(Setlist)
Southern Point
Cheerleader
Lullabye
Knife
Fine For Now
Two Weeks
Ready, Able
I Live With You
While You Wait For The Others