For the most part, Grizzly Bear’s 2006 breakthrough Yellow House creaked along like the rustic antique of the house depicted on its cover. Each bend in its hallways, every weathered step revealed something weirdly familiar, a sound that felt as if it had actually been lived-in. An unlikely candidate for the amount of recognition it brought the band, Yellow House was an album that demanded your rapt attention, and if given the patience, could lead to complete immersion.

Three years later with both an audience and the inherent expectations having grown exponentially, Grizzly Bear have hit that obligatory fork in the road with Veckatimest: the record that must answer the question of whether or not , Yellow House was merely a fleeting flash of brilliance. And to be perfectly honest, Veckatimest does have the power to dissuade their followers. Initially coming off like a logical, almost lateral step, the record may be lazily perceived as scattershot — over-capacity on the ideas strewn across its runtime, with Yellow House’s best devices photocopied and boosted for volume.

However, this would be a grave mistake that could only result from cursory listening. Despite an aggrandized sense of production, Veckatimest requires just as much, if not more of you, than its predecessor. In place of those slow, ghostly dirges of records’ past, is a fireworks display of deeply complex compositions, which on the repeat listens each track demands, unearths an almost uninterrupted stream of near-pop gems. While the record is split evenly between vocalists Ed Droste and Dan Rossen, it’s Droste who steals the show. Droste’s haunted, close to operatic performances, namely the windswept stunner “Ready, Able,’ are no less than consistently exquisite. Combine some of the best pipes in the game with Grizzly Bear’s newfound comfort in executing the grand & epic, and you’ve got Veckatimest: a total triumph that threatens to dwarf their own previous House.

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