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Grizzly Bear plays final show of Shields Tour

Grizzly Bear's colossal tour in support of 2012's Shields has taken the Brooklyn-band all across the globe, and last the night the tour finally came to a conclusion at the world-renowned Sydney Opera House. The band's two-hour long set was streamed live and is  available below, where the band starts around the nine minute mark.

As far as what's next for the band, vocalist Ed Droste was much less definitive in a recent interview with The Guardian. He called the time after the hiatus "the question mark of the future," and wondered aloud about how the band completed past albums. If you're starting to worry this is a Walkmen situation, Droste says hopefully at the end of the piece "There’s a desire there, it’s just a matter of figuring out the time frame and how long people need. It’s impossible to say. But I know that after Australia, I’m gonna want to jump back into it, for sure."

Hear a new track from A Sunny Day in Glasgow

It's been more than three years since dream-poppers A Sunny Day in Glasgow have released new music, but today the Philadelphia act returned with a new track with the unwieldy title "In Love with Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing)". While the kaleidoscopic tune possess many staples of the band's pensive style, like trembling guitar waves, some elements are entirely new. Stuttering vocal samples are laid over top one another, creating an effect equal parts hallucinatory and terrifying, giving the song an air of urgency much of the subdued Autumn Again lacked.

The track is from a forthcoming, as-of-yet unnamed LP that the band crowdfunded through Kickstarter. As a thank you to fans who supported the effort, the group released a disorienting visual for the track which you can find below.

Deafheaven announce North American tour

2013 was particularly kind to San Francisco black metal radicals Deafheaven. Their sophomore album Sunbather was the best-reviewed release of 2013, and wound up at number 7 on the AllFreshSounds "Top 40 Albums of 2013" list. In support of the awe-inspiring effort, the band is launching a North American tour starting in February. Between the Buried and Me, Intronaut, and the Kindred will open for the group at every date beginning on February 20. After the itinerary, you can check out the band performing the gorgeously gnawed "Dream House" live.


2/15 Salt Lake City, UT - Bar Deluxe
2/16 Denver, CO - Marquis Theatre
2/18 Nashville, TN - The End
2/19 Cincinnati, OH - Taft Theatre
2/20 West Springfield, VA - Empire
2/21 Huntington, NY - Paramount Theater
2/22 Clifton Park, NY - Upstate Concert Hall
2/23 Boston, MA - Royale Nightclub
2/24 Burlington, VT - Higher Ground
2/26 Montreal, Quebec - Corona Theater
2/27 Quebec City, Quebec - Imperial De Quebec
2/28 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix Concert Theatre
3/1 London, Ontario - London Music Hall
3/2 Syracuse, NY - Lost Horizon
3/4 Grand Rapids, MI - Intersection
3/5 Palatine, IL - Durty Nellie’s
3/6 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave
3/7 Lawrence, KS - Granada Theatre
3/8 Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room
3/10 Reno, NV - The Knitting Factory
3/11 Oakland, CA - Oakland Metro
3/12 Pomona, CA - Glasshouse
3/14 Lubbock, TX - Jake’s Sports Café
3/15 San Antonio, TX - White Rabbit
3/16 Dallas, TX - Spillover Fest
3/18 Sauget, IL - Pop’s
3/20 Ybor City, FL - The Ritz
3/21 Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Revolution
3/22 Athens, GA - 40 Watt
3/23 Charlotte, NC - Tremont Music Hall

Check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow @AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.

"Listen and Wait"- Grizzly Bear

A great trick of Grizzly Bear's output (particularly on the twin peaks of Veckatimest and last year's Shields) is their ability to cleverly recast their folksy-origins as arena-ready stompers. Drums frequently thunder and basses rumble, but underneath that raging exterior exists a carefully considered beauty. Where those brash instruments come and go as they please (like inconsiderate troubadours), ragged acoustic guitars remain long after the lights have been turned off. Pianos play for no one, ringing out of a haunted house.

"Listen and Wait" from the forthcoming Shields B-Sides album retains this great sleight-of-hand. A jaunty piano part and enjoined vocal figure enjoy their surroundings for 8 seconds before a cavernous drum slams the door on the proceedings. Admonishments to keep "careful" fight for space with a rippling synthesizer background. What registers as a bike-bell futilely attempts to escape the dark monsters cued by the rhythm section. Grizzly Bear's pastoral beauty and childlike-innocence is framed within the larger context of a decaying landscape. By the end, the artifice disappears and what once seemed a magnificent structure reveals itself to be a dilapidated building with a fresh coat of paint.

The Shields Expanded and Shields B-Sides editions are out 11/12 through Warp.

  

Track Attack- "Yet Again"

If "Yet Again," was your intro into the insular world of Grizzly Bear, you'd probably picture them as the arena equivalent of indie-pop peers like the Shins. As those first chords cut the night air like a Ginsu knife, you can picture Ed Droste sulking around the stage as a sea of onlookers stand in rapt attention. When the rumbling bass, on-point drumming, and cavernous vocals join hands, the track ascends to a higher plateau, reaching for the heavens and coming up just short. Listening to the track, the second single to emerge from the forthcoming Shields, hard to imagine this is the band that began as a home-spun project dead-set on folksy hypnosis. On the track, Droste's voice is as tender as ever, but has been blown up and coated with a thousand shades of blue. "Take it all in stride, speak don't confide," Droste adjures as the song drowns in a maelstrom of sound. Even with the decibels ratcheted up, Grizzly Bear finds a way to whisper their secrets into our ears. 

Shields Tracklist:
1. Sleeping Ute
2. Speak in Rounds
3. Adelma
4. Yet Again
5. The Hunt
6. A Simple Answer
7. What's Wrong
8. gun-shy
9. Half Gate
10. Sun in Your Eyes

"Yet Again"