Waking the Bear

Grizzly Bear has jumped back into the game with a play you would not expect. It’s a soft-spoken track with ambient gauze of hypnotically off sound, until pristine guitar stabs through.

“Sleeping Ute” is not trying to be the indie-pop hit “Knife” was, as this newest release for the band’s currently unnamed album highlights how decidedly impenetrable Grizzly Bear can be.

The song has an in-the-forest kind of appeal to it. Listeners of “Sleeping Ute” wander through the track with no real destination, but imagery of running bodies and sunlight passing through tree branches flies inexplicably through your head.

The band remains approachable, and though it didn’t produce a radio-ready track, it didn’t give us something difficult either.

Daniel Rossen’s voice is haunting as it wails and echoes in the comfortable ambiguity of sadness and catharsis. The electric guitar and noisy effects are the shining stars of the song’s carefully crafted, anxious aesthetic.

By Francisco Tirado