By all accounts it wasn't a hostile takeover, but when track eight on Grizzly Bear's 2006 breakthrough album, Yellow House, hit, it felt a little like Ed Droste's formerly solo project just handed the keys over to new member Daniel Rossen. "On a Neck, On a Spit" was not only the lead single, it also signalled a shift in the band's songcraft, replacing Droste's cozy lo-fi sketches with a more faux-orchestral and occasionally baroque code that has defined Rossen's work ever since.
Rossen's own pre-Grizzly Bear project, a duo with college roommate Fred Nicolaus, eventually named Department of Eagles, released In Ear Park in 2008. The album was completed borrowing both Chris Taylor and Christopher Bear from Grizzly Bear. Some songs consisted of ideas passed over by Grizzly Bear in the demo stage, though the end result, unsurprisingly, resembled a slightly more clang-and-bang version of Grizzly Bear's sound.
Through three more albums, Grizzly Bear maintained a reputation as critical darlings, through their dominance on the indie charts didn't quite cross over into mainstream success. In 2020, Ed Droste announced he was stepping away from the band he started, leaving it officially "on hiatus" and clearing the way for Rossen's first solo album.
You Belong There isn't a marked departure from Rossen's work in Grizzly Bear. The nimble guitar work and layered vocals that typify the usual elfin grace of his songs are still at play, with Rossen taking on woodwinds and upright bass to complete the picture. Perhaps affected by their composition and recording in upstate New York and Santa Fe, NM, the sound has a natural feel, announced by the chirping birds on opener "It's a Passage." Nature soon gives way to a kind of ornate description of beauty and melancholy that comes with most large-R "Romantic" poetry.
While the terms "psychedelic" and "experimental" are usually tossed around when describing Rossen's work, You Belong There is more akin to the pastoral progressive rock of mid-'70s Genesis or Jethro Tull. Tracks like "Unpeopled Space" and "Cecilia" have a multi-chambered construction that suggest the troubadour swoon and galloping rising of courtly song. Lead single "Shadow in the Frame" and later track "I'll Wait for Your Visit" most closely recall the bounding excitement of Grizzly Bear motifs, and in fact uncomfortably resemble each other in construction. That feeling of sameness haunts much of the album.
The trick of You Belong Here is that it masks its lack of new ideas with a savvy approach to composition, wringing emotional attachments out of ornament and glitter rather than trusting the songs beneath. It also is very much a case of giving the people what they want or expect, as this could easily have become a post-Droste Grizzly Bear album with few adjustments. For all of its pleasant sweeps and cultivated manners, it never really rises above an album of new themes for ambitious figure skating routines.
(Warp)Rossen's own pre-Grizzly Bear project, a duo with college roommate Fred Nicolaus, eventually named Department of Eagles, released In Ear Park in 2008. The album was completed borrowing both Chris Taylor and Christopher Bear from Grizzly Bear. Some songs consisted of ideas passed over by Grizzly Bear in the demo stage, though the end result, unsurprisingly, resembled a slightly more clang-and-bang version of Grizzly Bear's sound.
Through three more albums, Grizzly Bear maintained a reputation as critical darlings, through their dominance on the indie charts didn't quite cross over into mainstream success. In 2020, Ed Droste announced he was stepping away from the band he started, leaving it officially "on hiatus" and clearing the way for Rossen's first solo album.
You Belong There isn't a marked departure from Rossen's work in Grizzly Bear. The nimble guitar work and layered vocals that typify the usual elfin grace of his songs are still at play, with Rossen taking on woodwinds and upright bass to complete the picture. Perhaps affected by their composition and recording in upstate New York and Santa Fe, NM, the sound has a natural feel, announced by the chirping birds on opener "It's a Passage." Nature soon gives way to a kind of ornate description of beauty and melancholy that comes with most large-R "Romantic" poetry.
While the terms "psychedelic" and "experimental" are usually tossed around when describing Rossen's work, You Belong There is more akin to the pastoral progressive rock of mid-'70s Genesis or Jethro Tull. Tracks like "Unpeopled Space" and "Cecilia" have a multi-chambered construction that suggest the troubadour swoon and galloping rising of courtly song. Lead single "Shadow in the Frame" and later track "I'll Wait for Your Visit" most closely recall the bounding excitement of Grizzly Bear motifs, and in fact uncomfortably resemble each other in construction. That feeling of sameness haunts much of the album.
The trick of You Belong Here is that it masks its lack of new ideas with a savvy approach to composition, wringing emotional attachments out of ornament and glitter rather than trusting the songs beneath. It also is very much a case of giving the people what they want or expect, as this could easily have become a post-Droste Grizzly Bear album with few adjustments. For all of its pleasant sweeps and cultivated manners, it never really rises above an album of new themes for ambitious figure skating routines.
