Sound on Sound Review: Grizzly Bear

Embedding a touring keyboardist deep in the background, the principal members of Brooklyn and Los Angeles-based experimental indie rock quartet Grizzly Bear aligned themselves along a horizontal plane on the ACL Live at the Moody Theater stage Friday night.

It proved an appropriate projection of their singularly unified force, a solid beam of centralized cacophony. Assured in their craft, with the interlocking voices of Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen leading the way, the band amplified prime form for just over an hour.

Austin vocalist Molly Burch led in with a short but robust set, featuring a gorgeous rendition of her heart-aching single “Please Be Mine.” Soon after, the headlining gentlemen warmed up with cuts from latest LP Painted Ruins, including the lush and layered “Four Cypresses,” a song written from the perspective of a homeless man living under a highway overpass in Los Angeles.

Contrasting the customarily ascribed third-person viewpoint of assumed nothingness for the homeless, the track’s narrator reveals an attuned, sobering account of existence: “Living in a pile, it’s chaos, but it works.” Droste managed an indescribable saudade in the proceedings.

The supremely melodious “Losing All Sense” immediately followed, another faithful reproduction to the master recording. Where Grizzly Bear outdistances the competition is in playing at top speed from the jump. The songs are so packed, and each portion layered just so that they each fall like dominoes.

Of course, if one came to hear the band kick out the jams, they arrived at the right show. Grizzly Bear punched out shimmering versions of “While You Wait for the Others” and “Knife,” then ran down a ferocious version of “Two Weeks,” if a such a word could be attributed to a band centered on delivering dazzling and cerebral melodies. Drummer Christopher Bear conjured boldness and depth out of his trap-set dealing.

Fifteen years after their founding, and still building on their legend, Grizzly Bear have never sounded surer or more vital.