Grizzly Bear

 

In the four years since I broached the subject of jazz and indie-rock, the overlap has only grown, becoming its own unclassifiable meme. Spend just one night on the low-rent club scene in New York and you’ll hear a jazz group elasticizing rock rhythm, or dealing seriously with distortion. And the influence of Radiohead among jazzbos is now such a given that it’s almost quaint to remember how Brad Mehldau stirred things up with his version of “Exit Music (For a Film).”

It's not such a stretch to imagine the Brooklyn indie-rock band Grizzly Bear holding similar sway among 20 and 30-something jazz musicians. Grizzly Bear, which toured with Radiohead for a stretch last year, makes music of meticulous design and luminous effect. The band's third album, “Veckatimest” (Warp), presents a characteristic waft of vocal harmonies and layered textures. It's an atmospheric record; like the paintings of Edward Hopper, its bittersweet, quietly restless sound can suggest a pastoral unease.

I recently went on the record as a Grizzly Bear admirer, and spent a handful of hours talking shop with the band. It so happens that three of its four members hail from a jazz background; guitarist Daniel Rossen first met drummer Christopher Bear at a high school jazz camp, while bassist-multireedist-producer Chris Taylor (pictured above) grew up in Seattle, where he studied the saxophone intently enough to take some lessons with Branford Marsalis. 

At one point over dinner, we were casually discussing musical likes and dislikes, and when the topic turned to jazz, Taylor got excited. Here’s a brief excerpt from our conversation (the other person who pipes in is Rossen):    

It’s no surprise that Mingus and Ellington are touchstones for the band, and in context Ahmad Jamal makes sense. “We even tried to vaguely imitate him on a couple of the new songs,” Mr. Rossen says, and the music supports him. Listen here to “Southern Point,” the album opener, for what sounds quite a bit like a Vernell Fournier groove.

 Most jazz folk are hip to Fournier’s work with the Ahmad Jamal Trio -- in particular, on that band’s timeless version of “Poinciana” -- but it doesn’t strike me as a common reference for many indie-rockers in their 20s. It’s heartening to encounter jazz literacy anyplace you might not expect it, and for me this was one of those moments. I knew jazz was a shadow influence on the music of Grizzly Bear, but it apparently goes deeper than that.

Which is one reason I was bummed by the ignorance admitted by Taylor and Rossen on the subject of present-day jazz. Their frame of reference seemed to stop around the mid-‘60s, and they were (politely) dubious when I assured them that jazz was, creatively speaking, alive and well. I’d be interested to know their response to some of the music being made right in their neighborhood. Perhaps it’ll pop up on their radar after some recent New School alum posts a version of “Southern Point” arranged for trumpet, tenor saxophone and Fender Rhodes.

Comments

[DJA]

they were (politely) dubious when I assured them that jazz was, creatively speaking, alive and well.

So frustrating that (via the Nico Muhly association), GB presumably have no trouble believing that there are exciting new things happening in classical music, but not in the music they actually played in their formative years.