Issue 21 of Soundcheck Magazine
Interviews: Grizzly Bear, Heartless Bastards, Blind Pilot, Fanfarlo, The Soldier Thread and Quiet Company.
F-Stop: A selection of Soundcheck's favorite concert photos, including full-page shots of NIN, Jane's Addiction, Tom Morello, Death Cab For Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, Leonard Cohen, Neko Case, Modest Mouse, Cut Copy, Matt & Kim, Shearwater, The Decemberists, Handsome Furs and King Khan & the Shrines.
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Grizzly Bear: Reflections on Sound
words by Ryan Ffrench & photos by Randy Cremean
When asked to explain the theory of beauty expressed within his paintings, Pablo Picasso famously retorted: “I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!” Conceptual abstractions and big ideas were of no interest to the godfather of modern art. Those who sought to explain his pictures were, in his own words, “as a rule, completely mistaken.”
Central to Picasso’s view of painting – and that of the avant-garde in general – is the understanding that form and content are fundamentally inseparable parts of one aesthetic whole. Shapes, lines, and colors become agents not only of design, but also of emotional and existential communication. In a Picasso painting, subject matter and meaning are completely dissolved into style so that the viewer approaches the absolute only through details. This is, of course, what makes Picasso’s art so ”difficult” – but it also is what makes it so universal and rewarding.
The same is true of Grizzly Bear. Like Picasso, they seek artistic expression primarily in the formal elements of their craftsmanship – and, like Picasso, their audience is challenged to look beyond facile conceptualization and the search for ”meaning” to discover an authentic response in the finer details: spaces, textures, notes left behind. This is the kind of band who prefer to talk about the way their music sounds rather than what they intend it to do or be about. They prefer to talk about the way different reflective surfaces affect their harmonies than the way these harmonies affect their audience. Our conversation, then, came to focus not on the cerebral problems of beauty and art, but on the technical and creative problems of music itself.
(Read the rest of our feature on Grizzly Bear by downloading the PDF for Issue 21.)
