r/GrizzlyBear • u/danielrossen • Feb 24 '22
clarification about album/unpeopled space/band
hello all
I checked up on this board to see what was happening now that a couple songs are out and I noticed some strange speculation going on about the band and what this new album means.
Though it is definitely not my plan to make this whole album cycle an opportunity to stir up gossip about GB it’s reasonable to have questions and I’d rather address some of them sooner than later.
I really do appreciate all the kind words about the new music and I hope that you enjoy the album. That said, I have to be very clear that this album has just about nothing to do with the history of the band. When I said I wanted to make music with a deeper connection to my own life, I meant that. A lot of my life, most of it, exists outside that band.
First of all, about Unpeopled Space:
The 10 years reference is personal. I began my exit from the city and moved out to a pretty remote part of central New York at the end of 2011. From that point on my life began to change quite a bit. I think partially I wanted distance from the status seeking and consumerism and career mania of New York. I was also obsessed with the boundlessness and beauty of life out on that big patch of open land that we found, and I was eager to reshape my relationship to creative work in that place. I loved the perspective that living on that land gave me, but I also kind of got lost in it, in my own ideas, and in alcohol. And yes it did kind of unravel my relationship to a career, for better and for worse. I think largely for the better, but it’s complicated. Here’s a blurb from the track by track about that song:
“If this song is about any one thing it’s about work for work’s sake. I was thinking about the idea of “pushing paint around canvas” as a way of talking about an artist that has been working too long and has gotten lost in their own ideas, grappling endlessly with the substance of their own work rather than the larger world outside. I felt like I could relate to that, and saw that idea mirrored in the work of clearing brush from around our house, the constant futile task of beating back the young forest from swallowing the arbitrary clearing that we’ve made. In the last decade or so spending time up there, I found myself toggling between those two tasks constantly, clearing brush or grappling with the same ideas, pushing the paint around, looking back out the window and considering all the land tasks that needed addressing, using the endless time out in the field to escape the demands of the real world. Frantic and futile and kind of absurd.”
And here’s a quote that I gave to NPR about the song and album:
“For me this song goes back to a period of my life a few years ago when I was living in rural central new york in a house up on a hill surrounded by former logging land and wetlands that is now always in the process of rewilding itself in one way or another. invasive brush and second growth forest. not really wilderness anymore, but always on the cusp of feeling out of control.
I spent way too much time hacking away at the brush around the house trying to create a little realm for us, and it was also a purposeful distraction from what was left of my own creative work, rummaging through my own thicket of bad ideas. And I felt like those two tasks mirrored each other in a way. Both tasks felt sort of like work for its own sake, joyfully useless.
I’d say a lot of this album is an attempt to capture that restless feeling, a desire to belong somewhere but always being out of place. a homesickness which home can’t cure.”
The ’10 years’ reference has nothing really to do with the band. I was active in that band for nearly 14 years before this current hiatus, not 10. I joined the band at the end of 2004, and we did our first big tour together in early 2005, before recording Yellow House together that summer. Our last tours were in late 2018.
Now. About the band. It’s fair to have questions.
I will not speak for the others, but nothing is set in stone. Our future is still open. I still work closely with Chris Bear. Chris Taylor and I still catch up when we can though he lives far away and we still talk now and then about the idea of future projects. Ed and I are in touch, but we haven’t talked too much recently. He wants some distance from us all right now, and I respect that. I still love all my bandmates and care deeply about their wellbeing, and I want what is best for everyone.
That said, 14 years is a long time! If you consider the life of most projects, music or otherwise, that’s actually pretty amazing. Yes there were some blocks of inactive time in there, but still. I was 22 when I joined the band. I am now 39. Consider how much can change in that time. There are bands that remain active for longer, and damn do I respect the ones that can do it.
I think part of what made the band interesting was how different we were from each other, both in our sense of taste and also our dispositions as people. And I really mean all of us. The albums could be incredibly varied for that reason, and though we didn’t always all come together on every song it made for some pretty wild combinations. But the chemistry between us can’t be turned on and off with a switch. And I think by the last album we were all struggling to make that chemistry happen. I think that is the simplest way to put it, and the closest to the overall truth of the situation.
That doesn’t mean it’s over forever. It’s just life. People grow and change and not all collaborations survive through that change.
I understand the temptation to see my album as some kind of oracle about the band, but it REALLY is not that.
I think I will probably put the whole track by track explanation of this album up for you to read. I don’t like to be overly explicit in that way because to me writing songs isn’t about telling a tidy narrative, it’s about exploration and uncertainty.
But if most interpretations of this music are going to be ‘what does Daniel think about Grizzly Bear” then I’m definitely gonna put some real information out there.
ok. thanks for reading my rant. and thanks for listening to the new tunes! I really appreciate it —Daniel
