Grizzly Bear – Ready, Able

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In many ways, the new music video for “Ready, Able” matches my feelings for the lush track off of Veckatimest, one of the year’s best albums.

The video’s best moments (see colorful melting at :47, potential alien abduction at 1:53, and awesome clay, stop-motion transformations at 3:26) come at the song’s most thrilling moments- jolts of orchestration and psychedelic jamming are recreated with colorful, magnificent feats of claymation. The video is also strange and original, much like the song with its oddly unorthodox buildup and structure.

Most importantly, the video and the song match in that I’m not sure whether I like either of them, but something definitely keeps me watching or listening. As with many Grizzly Bear tracks, “Ready, Able” is about the musical moments, the breakdowns of choir chants and lavish instrumentation it builds to. If  you’re not patient enough to wait for those moments in the song (and the accompanying visual moments in the video), Veckatimest has probably already been shoved to the side on your iPod.

That aside, “Ready, Able,” while much-loved by the blog world, is not even one of my favorite songs on the album, and its selection as a single surprises me. There are too many tracks on Veckatimest that don’t stall, or make you wait, and are brilliant throughout. Those tracks really can hook a listener not yet convinced by the sounds of Grizzly Bear. “Ready, Able” cannot, and will only allow haters to continually point out that Grizzly Bear can, at times, be boring.

Buy Veckatimest and other Grizzly Bear releases at InSound or at Amazon.

by Adam Offitzer on November 17, 2009 ‡ 0 reactions