The last time Grizzly Bear played at UCLA, the performance consisted of a short-lived set at Kerckhoff Coffeehouse in 2004.
“It was one of the most hilarious shows we did,” said Daniel Rossen, who shares songwriting duties and plays guitar for the indie rock band Grizzly Bear.
“People were literally studying physics in the coffee shop and didn’t expect there to be a concert. We were ordered to turn (it) down because the staff said it was against work code.”
This time, after their ambitious 2006 album “Yellow House,” a near non-stop headlining tour, and a slew of sold out shows in the U.S., the foursome will be playing in the Kerckhoff Grand Salon on Thursday at noon, courtesy of the Campus Events Commission.
“(This tour) has been amazing,” Rossen said. “We were somehow able to sell out Salt Lake City, which is insane to me. I’ve never imagined having an audience somewhere like Utah. It’s all beautiful, wide-open and a little bit bleak at times but gorgeous with a lot of rolling hills and mountains. The drive up to the top of the West Coast and down through Oregon is always my favorite part of the tour lifestyle.”
Rossen said the band’s sound was fully realized during the recording of “Yellow House,” the first album all four band members worked on together. It was recorded in Cape Cod at frontman Ed Droste’s family home, the yellow-colored house the album takes its title from.
“It was a house Ed grew up in, a beautiful Victorian-style house that’s about a hundred years old,” Rossen said. “It was in the middle of summer and they didn’t have any AC so it was hot the whole time. Everything had this wonderful age and ambiance to it, so it was isolating in a way, out in the suburbs. We recorded all hours of the day. … We had never tried recording anything together with the four of us. It was very intense, like a music camp experience.”
Appearing on many critics’ year-end lists, “Yellow House” is full of entrancing melodies and multi-layered sonic arrangements that could belong in an idyllic past. For that reason, it came as a surprise to the highly UCLA-student-populated Spaceland show in Silverlake last fall that instead of strumming out “Yellow House” in full, Grizzly Bear crashed its foundations down in a noisy flurry.
“It’s a very different animal,” Rossen said. “We worked out our live sound before “˜Yellow House’ but it was always a different thing. When recording you end up layering and layering using all the effects, but when we do things live we always end up wanting to tear it down. Everything ends up wilder.”
Whether choosing a noisy or folky route, Grizzly Bear exercises a heavy fixation on song-crafting, which is perhaps what provides a launching pad for its live experimentation.
“It’s a weird combination of these planned-out arrangements forced into the framework of the band,” Rossen said. “Then there were songs we developed very much as a band which we played together on tour, like “˜Lullabye.’ I’m hoping we’re going to go more in that direction for the next record ““ to feel it out together.”
Though they won’t be done touring until the end of May, the members of Grizzly Bear have their hands full well into fall ““ and they have no intention of stopping there. The band plans to record a cover of CSS’ “Let’s Make Love And Listen to Death From Above” to pay back the Brazilian dance-pop band for covering Grizzly Bear’s “Knife”.
There is also a new album in the works, and Rossen, for one, is excited about the possibilities.
“We’re trying to plan recording this fall in another house that belongs to Ed’s dad, or something in Colorado,” Rossen said. “I don’t know if the name of the album will have anything to do with that house. I don’t even have an idea of how the next record is going to be. I think everything is going to change. I hope it does ““ it keeps it fresh.”