Horn of Plenty is a nostalgic amalgamation of found sounds and layered vocals bound to thrill followers of Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Nick Drake and the Unicorns. While the album pushes the boundaries of mellow into undiscovered territory, Grizzly Bear is not sure if they fall under the newly coined "freak-folk" category or hte new-folk genre, but they'd like to offer up wood-temp or cave-core. V Magazine likened them to Neil Young on cough syrup.
Grizzly Bear
Horn of Plenty
[Kanine; 2004]
Rating: 7.7
Considering their name, Brooklyn address, and penchant for lo-fi campfire serenades, there's a powerful temptation to put Grizzly Bear in the same pen as those other charismatic megafauna, the Animal Collective, and be finished zookeeping for the night. But Horn of Plenty proves that categorization would be neither fair nor accurate. The gentlemen of Grizzly Bear paw around in wholly distinct regions of gentle, nocturnal psych-folk, conjuring visions of an imagined bedroom collaboration between the Doug Yule-era Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, and a pajama-clad Pooh with his head jammed in a honey jar.
Originally conceived by multi-talented singer-songwriter Edward Droste as solo demos, the recordings that became Horn of Plenty were later augmented by the additional vocals and instrumentation of Christopher Bear, and after hearing the off-handed cohesion of the duo's dreamy harmonies and their seemingly effortless musical interplay it's difficult to imagine these songs achieving such heights of hushed majesty in any other format. And the extra set of hands ensures the flow of enough fresh oxygen to allow the album to avoid complete descent into the troubled, myopic solitude of such similarly toned homespun constructions as Skip Spence's Oar or Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs.
The album opens with the appropriately submerged sounds of "Deep Sea Diver", which gradually climbs through currents of chiming, bell-like keys and guitars before finally surfacing into golden falsetto rays of sunlight. "Disappearing Act" marries its autumnal folk choruses to gauzy smears of vinyl hiss, handbells, and remote martial snares, while the clattering pocket symphony of "Showcase" eventually dissolves into the wordless vocalizing of felines on distant fire escapes. On nearly every track a previously unheard element, such as the mournful violin that shivers up the spine of "Eavesdropping", makes a brief spectral appearance before once again vanishing, leaving the listener to wonder at what hidden treasures further scrutiny might unearth.
Given the heady depth of Horn of Plenty's hazy musical swoon, Grizzly Bear's lyrics somewhat surprisingly strike a pleasant counterbalance by residing more often than not in the familiar realm of day-to-day reality. It's not unusual to hear Droste and Bear singing relatively mundane pronouncements like "My chest hurts a lot tonight" or "It's amazing I can still sing this song so simply about you," with such matter-of-fact nonchalance that as a result these songs collectively sound as unforced and natural as a series of quiet exhalations, capable of transferring the beguiling, intoxicating atmospheres of Grizzly Bear's bedroom directly into your own.
-Matthew Murphy, February 11, 2005
Review by Bret Love
Grizzly Bear's debut offers up a lysergic brand of minimalist psychedelic folk perfect for those who find Elliott Smith's early work a bit too accessible and upbeat. Marking an evolution from one-man home recording project to full-fledged quartet, the studio-recorded Horn of Plenty features a mostly melancholy mix of acoustic guitars, reeds, retro organs, and samples, all drenched in enough acid-washed effects to give Devendra Banhart flashbacks. Frontman Ed Droste's weary, somnambulistic vocals work well with the slackadaisical melodies to create an unsettling atmospheric sound full of shimmering shadows. Songs like the opening "Deep Sea Diver" and the mesmerizing "Shift" crawl along at an almost funereal pace, the latter featuring what sounds like a scratchy Gramophone recording of a piano augmented only by echoing whistles, clapping, trippy found sounds, and weirdly hypnotic multi-tracked vocals. The expanded lineup and production budget have done nothing to change the group's lo-fi approach, which produces a murky sound that unfolds like a narcotic dream you can't quite shake upon waking. This is the kind of album you'll want to listen to late at night, perhaps a few sheets to the wind, with lights off and headphones on to allow these creepy, quiet little tunes to worm their way into your subconscious.
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