Grizzly Bear - Shields

Really heartened by the reaction you're having to Shields, and, as I said on twitter, suspect you'd adore Veckatimest as well - the use of choirs in Cheerleader and Foreground is really astonishingly beautiful, and Southern Point and the two big singles we both awesome.

i always skip the first 2 tracks

On Veckatimest? Wow, Southern Point is like my favourite thing they've done (thou maybe not for that long).

on shields

i read your post i just didn't clue in that those were the first 2 tracks on veckatimest

Southern Point is also my favorite GB thing

I love how the last two minutes of "What's wrong" sounds like it could have come from the Mark Hollis solo album. Has anyone else noticed that?

Yeah, they do, totally. The choirs I just mentioned are channelling I Believe In You, too.

great to see this crossing over both commercially but also critically to people who might have ignored/written off the first few records as too pitchforky indie for them.

Listening to this straight through from Veckatimest. Again. Awesome.

I guess I will have to try again, as I don't hear such awesomeness. There's this laidback granola aspect that I need to work through to appreciate this, I think.

I think, a bit like late-period Talk Talk, people sometimes forget or don't notice the bits when Grizzly Bear fucking pummell, and come away with the impression that it's just wistful harmonies and acoustic guitar arpeggios when actually there's a huge amount of dynamism and thumping and drama here too.

I'm sticking picking up new things from "Shields" with each listen. Current favourite moment, 1:40 to 1:50 of "A simple answer" just coming out of the first chorus, a chord change and hinted melody that most people would jump on and ride into the distance, but they just do it once and leave it. I could happily loop that ten seconds for a while.

there are things about this record that i love: how eerie and jazzy is "what's wrong"! how tight are they as a unit on "sleeping ute"! "yet again" sort of reminds me of aimee mann's "the moth" which is a hell of a melody to recall!

but otherwise my attention drifts

finally getting kind of sick of this album after non-stop play for two weeks

Rob M I commend thee to go and get Veckatimest this instant.

Or command, or whatever.

http://sickmouthy.com/2012/10/21/on-grizzly-bear-on-a-sunday-morning/

Newport record shops haven't got Veckawhatever, will take trip to Cardiff to get it this week.

"Gun-Shy" crazily tuneful

Great piece, Nick. Am now thinking I should probably revisit Veckatimest, as I'd never fully warmed to it.

mr mouthy you should hear horn of plenty, it's a great collection of songs. far far removed from what GB have become but I loved it when it came out, and gave it a listen recently and it still stands up.

I disagree, I love Horn of Plenty to bits but don't think it'd be Nick's bag
Although I would recommend to you the A+ Simon Bookish remix of "Eavesdropping"

wasn't aware of this till recently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8rUQLRH844
where these guys are coming from hits home a little more now

Despite the fact that 'Shields' sounds like an open and dynamic production I'm reading lots of talk about the CD version being brickwalled. I picked it up on vinyl so I can't really comment, I have heard 'Veckatimest' on CD and vinyl and I thought they both sounded great.

If it is true it's a real shame that an album as sonically nuanced as ‘Shields’ is as likely as any other to be molested at the mastering stage.

That's crazy talk. It doesn't sound like Diana Krall, certainly, but it sounds great.

I'd like to think so but this doesn't look too good.

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=27146

That means nothing; trust your ears!

Saying that, here's a couple of waveforms.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/th_ScreenShot2012-10-22at102907.png

Top= Speak In Rounds, bottom = While You Wait For The Others.

Yes, it's loud(er than Rid of Me!), but it's not noticably clipped at all, there's plenty of movement, headroom, and, most importantly, it sounds wonderful; the timbres, separation, etc etc etc.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/ScreenShot2012-10-22at102907.png

Fuck you, photobucket.

I know that waveforms do not tell the whole story but that's good to see. Sure it looks busy but it also looks like there's some headroom.

Like I said, I've not heard the CD at all so I was just throwing it out there to see if anyone who has had any opinions.

It's very easy to get obsessed with numbers and perfection and so on, but it's not really very useful. I'm a lot more pragmatic now than I used to be. Speak in Rounds is the 'rockiest' track on Shields, and if it gets up to peak without shaving edges off during the rockiest bit, then so be it.

God knows what Dr Loudness War's stats actually mean, but putting them together like that is like comparing a Ferrari to a Golf to a Transit van based purely on size of engine and BHP, without looking at them or test driving them or considering what they're actually for.

Hidden by TNP gets a shite rating on there - http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=14461

Appears that it was sympathetically mastered. Found this illuminating and in depth article with the mastering engineer.

http://www.sonicscoop.com/2012/09/13/behind-the-release-grizzly-bear-shields/

While I’m glad that people are paying more attention to things like dynamic range nowadays I am increasingly getting frustrated at people yelling “brickwalled” at anything with a busy waveform rather than, as Nick points out, trusting your ears in the first instance. The stuff I heard about the ‘Shields’ CD originated on an audiophile forum and often they are the worst for judging sonics primarily on, often arbitrary, numbers.

Ha, Plumb by Field Music, which has a note in the sleeve about lack of DRC in mastering, gets a rubbish rating: http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=18328

Rock albums are by their nature not that dynamic - rock's meant to be loud and exciting, it's not classical music or jazz.

lol @ The Drift only scoring in 'transition'. http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=21912

I do disagree that the dynamic range database is a total waste of time mind you. While it's not the be all and end of an albums fidelity it is one amongst many ways (specral analysis, waveforms etc) of trying to quantify the quality of an audio recording. One of the major reasons I buy new vinyl is because often a seperate (hopefully high resolution) master is used. Loads of modern CD's seem sadly to be made for the car/to be ripped to mp3 and as such get over compressed and limited.

Also, I agree on the point about rock being meant to be loud. With that in mind those TNP and Field Music LP's look ok.

This is as bad as to be expected however.

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=7123

That mixing interview is great.

Desire from Spirit of Eden only gets a red 8, but it's also the track with the fucking huge awesome overwhelming thunderstorm of drums.

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=7452

To be honest the SACD and recent vinyl remaster, as well as the original 1988 CD issue all sound better to my ears than that remaster of Spirit of Eden. That database seems to highlight that as well.

I've only ever heard the 97 CD. I'm happy with it!

THis is interesting - http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=10694 - because I know from someone in the band that this vinyl release was a needle-drop from the CD master and they were fucking furious.

The 97 CD was my first copy and the one I grew to love but you should really check out the high Rez or original CD as well.

Needledrop or CD masters being used for records should be a crime.

Cosmogramma... http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=5448

Ouch.

Going back to something I mentioned yesterday, Newport HMV must have heard my silent cry and I now have "Veckatimest" - plus "Soon over Babaluma" in the '2 for £10' offer. Hurrah.

Regarding SoE, I have the 97 CD and was happy with it until I picked up a recent TT best of for £3, mainly for "John Cope", and the remastering on "Wealth" and the single edit of "I believe in you" sounded so good and so much better. If I see the new remaster of SoE at a decent price I'll pick it up.

"Shields" doesn't sound brickwalled to me, and it's your ears that decide whether it sounds good at the end of the day.

Love John Cope.

wtf album sounds fine and is perfectly dynamic, what is this, the steve hoffman board?

Nah, it wasn't on the Hoffman board. Those guy's are crazy.

It was on a private torrent tracker.

I was a big fan of these guys but here my problem is that what you guys are saying is absolutely true, but I don't hear much else going on. It's all lovely to the ear and dynamic in its way but for me it seems to just float around on that plateau of loveliness-in-variation without much else to distinguish it song by song. Listening to it, quite intently, for I think the third time, at one point I accidentally skipped to another track and couldn't for the life of me work out which one I'd just been listening to. I'm sure there are good counterarguments and I'm sure it's my fault but I'M COMPLAINING ANYWAY.

Took me several listens to star pulling the songs apart, definitely. Half a dozen at least.

My only negative point of the album would be The Hunt, or maybe the fact that is placed in the middle of the album.