Review Summary: frontal lobe disintegration; let the ocean take me.
Euphoria seems like such a hopeless pursuit. Being satisfied with something enough to take you to a higher state of being just doesn’t really seem possible. But the issue a lot of people don’t really notice with “euphoria” is: since it’s all in the head, isn’t it theoretically controlled by what you let take you? That was my issue previously with getting into more psychedelic types of music/art. You can’t necessarily just go into a record expecting it to just lift you. It sounds a tad cheesy, but you legitimately have to immerse yourself into it. You can’t just throw on
Close To The Edge and expect it to throw you into the clouds like it’s nothing. Granted if any record could it’d probably be
Close To The Edge, but I digress; the thing is with psychedelic music, it’s more than just a genre to take drugs to.
Painted Ruins is a showcase of why psychedelic music is so much more than drugs or having a musical “high”.
The sonic landscapes Grizzly Bear gloss the canvas with
Painted Ruins is anything but little. The record plays on every aspect that made albums like
Shields and
Veckatimest so great and amplifies them to the best of their abilities. The maturity showcased on
Painted Ruins airs a much less indie-folk inspired Animal Collective worship, and gives a more melancholic synth-fueled approach with broad atmosphere. The imagery that the overall soundscapes provokes a sky always pitch black, yet with a beautiful sunrise in the distance shaded a rough champagne pink, with swirling lavenders that twist their way around the edges. The unique structures of songs like “Aquarian” or “Glass” provide such a refreshing feel to today’s modern psychedelia, where awkward pop infusions and lackluster performances are becoming more than commonplace. The brilliant production and improved instrumentation, especially from drummer Christopher Bear, only contribute to this. Bear’s performances on songs like “Four Cypresses” and “Sky Took Hold” give a triumphant and uplifting counterpart to frontman Ed Droste’s dreary vocals coupled with the beautifully grating synths that appear all over
Painted Ruins. The atmosphere and ambition Grizzly Bear accomplish here only works to move the currently slumped psychedelic-pop scene into more sensible territories for the better.
The pure melancholic psychedelic pop take on their previously freak-folk inspired works really paint a canvas of a dreary yet ravishing aura with
Painted Ruins that so many bands try so hopelessly to replicate. The vocals from Droste are only on the incline, the ambient shaded production, and the toned down (for the better) instrumentals only add even more extravagance to the gorgeous canvas provided with
Painted Ruins. The small flaws such as occasionally over the top exotic instruments or odd synthesizer pieces only act as a small hairline fractures to the big picture. With
Painted Ruins, Grizzly Bear dust the old pictures off the wall, and ruin them with the darkest fluorescents in the best damn way a modern psychedelic band really can do.
