Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

Label: Warp

The musical world scratched its head in puzzlement when our local freak-folk favorites Grizzly Bear signed with the indie-electronica label Warp, home to the likes of Boards of Canada and Broadcast. Would this odd pairing work? Well, the results are in, and there’s nothing to fear. Yellow House is simply a fantastic album, tackling avant-pop with such grace and tact as to almost reinvent the genre. Lush strings and flutes awash behind plucks of banjos and mandolins while pianos flourish and synths drone all to the whimsical voices of this extremely talented quartet. This is Grizzly Bear’s breakthrough record, effortlessly showcasing their chops, instrumental virtuosity, compositional know-how and brilliant vision, all of which are attributes clearly missing from the majority of music these days. A brilliant album in every way, and one of 2006’s finest releases.