Friend

It was only last fall that Grizzly Bear released their Warp Records debut, Yellow House, but the album feels much older. An impeccably crafted psychedelic folk record, it drifts from one dream-like passage to the next. Its lyrics draw on typical relationship fare, but the delicate instrumentation is otherworldly, evoking the pastoral scenery of antique storybook illustrations. That kind of careful attention to sonic detail isn't just a rarity in independent music right now-- it's practically anachronistic. I revisited Yellow House recently because something about Grizzly Bear's Friend EP had made me curious: Although many of the new EP's tracks are credited as re-workings or alternate versions of Yellow House tunes (or of songs from the band's demo-esque debut Horn of Plenty), almost none of it sounds familiar. The tracklist suggests it's just your average collection of odds and ends, but it's a trick: Of the four older songs that Grizzly Bear re-arrange on Friend, three are so far removed from their earlier versions as to bear only the faintest connection to their origins-- and the one that isn't, "Shift", is improved so dramatically that it acquires a second life. In fact, ignore the three inconsequential covers from Grizzly Bear's indie rock contemporaries and what you have is a very well-disguised, 31-minute mini-LP of newly recorded (and largely newly written) material that makes "Knife"-- Yellow House's height of pop accessibility-- sound formless by comparison.