Yellow House 0
2006 -
I was 10. It's funny to think that I was totally oblivious to this album's release. I was playing basketball against my future bandmate (and best man), Cooper. We didn't know each other at the time, just in the same league. Both of us were equally unaware that something that would so profoundly impact our lives had been lovingly written, recorded, and released.
2 07 6
Easier
This is THE way to start a Grizzly Bear album. The transition from lush winds to a singular distant piano then falling into the wooden cradle of a plucky guitar is simply the most-correct thing they could have done here. The distorted electric guitar droning underneath the sincere-but-not-too-self-serious lilting harmony throughout makes me think "The Pixies Gone to College."
Lullabye
Misspelled with "Bye" in the title because this album, despite being kind of vague narratively, does appear to be a "Breakup Album," or at the very least a "Transitional Album."
My case is as follows:
- The Knife
- "My love is another kind."
- "What now?" ending the album
- The sorrowful, introspective harmony and production
2010
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In the end-of-day sunlight, along the white blossoming almond orchards, I rode my bike into town. I played a cheap violin I'd borrowed from my new friend, Cooper, while riding. We properly met competing against each other in a local battle of bands. Neither of us won. I absolutely did not know how to play violin, but wearing a thrifted golf shirt and a gifted paperboy hat, dammit, I was going to.
That night my friends and I met downtown, around a corner on a dimly lit side-street. The sky was near, and the oak leaves, just starting to turn amber, caught the moonlight like an open hand. The unconcerned foot traffic and faint conversations were comforting and anonymizing. We helped each other climb over a tall gate without fear of being discovered. We went further, lifting and pulling each other onto the rooftops. Peering through a faintly orange skylight into a bar below, I saw laughing friends shooting pool and a smiling couple tucked in the corner.
We found a window that hadn't been locked. Why would it be? It's on the second story. Walking through empty offices was less creepy and exciting than I had imagined it would be just moments before. What stuck with me was the desk trinkets, the personal touches, the family pictures. These were ordinary lives that I was momentarily and secretly a part of. Suddenly I felt as though my future was near, like the sky.
We walked down noisy wooden stairs and out the front door as if we'd just gotten off a late shift. No one outside seemed to notice. I was in love with the feeling of exploration and strange discovery. Enter Grizzly Bear's Yellow House.
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My friends and I gathered around great albums like they were religious artifacts. We revered Yellow House like it was desperately trying to tell us something about ourselves. We yearned to be the subject of such devastating songs.
Knife C
"Can you feel the knife?"
What a refrain. This is some of the simplest harmonic motion on the album, but they sell it and we're all buying. I've never felt such fresh melancholy from a G major to E minor. The linear, cinematic drumming supports the slow, exacting vocals. No one is overplaying on this track, allowing every layer to render in full fidelity.
This would be a good album to share with aliens.
Central and Remote
The lyrics here are simple and reflective. I see a cloaked figure on horseback passing wooden fences; a slightly scowling woman's face through a rain-dropped train window. I don't hear anger, just the hard work of moving on.
Step aside, stomp-clappers, this is where Grizzly Bear flex their studied and practiced musicianship. However, the song slowly runs out of steam with more of an ellipsis than a period.
Little Brother
One of the most iconic guitar/banjo moments in indie rock. This song yearns for a quiet room to be played in.
"Now go back to the other side of my bed."
Sounds like something you'd say to a ghost. The outro's ambience and playfulness is where I really see the relation of Grizzly Bear to psychedelic bands like Animal Collective. It's why they live in a similar place in my heart. Grizzly Bear at this stage is content to explore quiet psychedelic music. Not everyone is able to bring it down to this softness and still feel like they're standing on the cliffside of a mountainous revelation.
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Plans
Narratively weak. Musically theatrical, not the sophistication they're capable of. This song feels like an idea that they enjoyed playing. There are redeeming moments, like the whistling melody. But ultimately, it falls too much into the circusy "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" style musical theater.
Marla
Initially had the same reaction as to Plans. It just has this American Horror Story vibe that I'm not looking to feel, like, almost ever.
"I've looked in the attic, I've looked in the hall"
After learning that it's more a family heirloom than a new song made me appreciate it more. I love that we have this song, I just don't think it's a great Grizzly Bear song. On this track they explore "Welcome to my dark twisted mind" style chromaticism that loses me.
2014 O
Cooper and I had this 100-year-old snare drum that we just absolutely beat the hell out of, thanks to Chris Bear's drumming on Yellow House. It was a central set piece in the living room of a huge yellow Victorian we lived in. There were ten of us, including the same friends who were on the rooftop in 2010.
Also in attendance was an old electric organ from my great-grandmother, whose haunting songs could be heard throughout the house. We discovered lots of new music around this time, and blasted it at the many parties, but Yellow House always stayed in heavy rotation.
Rehearsals for hours, friends at all hours, it was all ours.
"All my time, I spend it with you now."
-[]
One night we were hanging out on our front porch, watching a party across the street from the smoking section of our own. This house across the street was an unaffiliated fraternity. Meaning they had no connection to the college, just grown men (averaging ten years older than us) clinging to their idea of "college life." We heard their music stop mid-song. There was a commotion in the house. Then an ambulance arrived. Then disappointed parents to take their kids home. Eventually the paramedics and parents left - hurried and unceremonious.
Their music turned back on, louder than before. We'd all just quietly witnessed something, and we knew it. We didn't know what exactly, but it was sad, and probably even sadder than we realized.
Their house was not yellow, ours was.
On a Neck, On a Spit
I'm impressed by the singing, the musicianship on display, the lyrical content, the explosive bursts of cymbals and acoustic guitar being carelessly strummed as if he's trying to break the strings. The intro drifts around a sharp corner into a masterful, technically demanding guitar part halfway through. Iconic.
The roaring chaos they build to while maintaining such a high level of instrumental discipline is not something I'd heard before this album, or have often heard since.
Reprise
The calm before the storm. Dreamy, ephemeral, curiosity-inducing reprise. It begs you to reconsider what he means by
"My love is another kind"
One of the most memorable refrains in this genre, let alone the album.
Colorado
"What now?"
Daniel Rossen asks us at the end of Yellow House. A challenge to other artists? A challenge to themselves? An open-ended question that is repeated for several minutes. The song, despite its nearly seven-minute runtime, is curt.
When I clung to you, there was nothing to hold on tight with.
You left me adrift.
Colorado.
What now?
Twenty years later, I hear an album about what happens when the known has run its course.
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2026 0
I'm 32 now and yellow is my favorite color lately. The color of fall, of a certain brick road, of dissonance, of yolks, of baby puke, and of fruits in their short window of perfection.
I keep returning to Yellow House when my life changes. A month ago I became a father – a change that has also occurred for several members of Grizzly Bear since the album's release. Becoming a dad, reflecting on how this album has accompanied my life, I am still repeating that line twenty years later.
It continues to mean something new every single time I hear it.