Credit: Found On Internet

Cargo, Wednesday 6 September

Out of the humid, industrial cool of East London’s Cargo, Grizzly Bear emerged to promote the UK release of their new album Yellow House.

The New Yorkers’ live performance is the best marketing tool they have because nothing says more clearly – not even the free pin badges - that buying a Grizzly Bear record is about buying into a place, a feeling, a sonic dreamscape.

The quartet’s sound lurches from ethereal harmonies, intricate guitar lifts and music-box delicacies to crashing piano chords, a bass drone and stark chorals.

It is lush but scarred, mellow but meticulous and, as the heat prickle rising on the back of the neck testifies, at times suffocating.

Knife – the proposed first single - is a simple crowd-pleaser threaded with Jeff Buckley guitar riffs and stoned-out harmonies.

The set also includes moments of twisted country, that journey from Crosby, Stills & Nash to My Morning Jacket in On A Neck, On A Spit and Reprise and far stranger turns reminiscent of late 60s Brian Wilson tampering with Dark Of The Moon in an attic.

But Lullabye betrays the black heart that forces Grizzly Bear’s complexities and contradictions.

Opening with a gentle, layered melody led by an auto-harp it ultimately breaks down into a clash of piano and rolling drums. It felt like taking pleasure in destroying your favourite toy.

The problem with the bleakly, haunting perfection of Grizzly Bear’s sound is, it is so absorbing that standing like cannon fodder in Cargo waiting for it to overwhelm is a little uncomfortable.

Far better to take their Yellow House home, stock up on liquor and smokes and then escape into some Grizzly Bear hibernation.

Yellow House is out now on Warp Records.
www.grizzly-bear.net