Grizzly Bear

[AVANT-POP] Three years ago, Brooklyn's Grizzly Bear roped unsuspecting listeners into its dusky, enigmatic mélange with "Two Weeks," a buoyant, bliss-drunk, honest-to-goodness pop song. A lot of those listeners came away from Veckatimest, the album that contained it, confused. Generally speaking, jazz-inflected avant-garde chamber-folk isn't going to hold the masses' attention for long. Those who stuck around, however, and allowed the mysteries of that 2009 masterpiece to fully sink in, discovered what others have known since 2006's Yellow House: That singer Ed Droste's onetime bedroom recording project has evolved into one of the most compelling bands of its era. There isn't another "Two Weeks" on Shields, the group's just-released fourth album—none of these songs will ever appear in a car commercial—but Grizzly Bear is continuing to map its own, resplendent cosmos, dotted with celestial harmonies, captivating arrangements and textural landscapes that grow grander the more you gaze upon them.