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The song conjures up images so lucid that after a couple of listens you won't know if you're awake or just dreaming.
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Brian Wilson caught in the rainforest.
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Less oomph and more aaaah, it’s a tease of a track, gently dragging its audience through washes and drones and delicately plucked strings ‘til it fades away under a chorus of child-like yelps.
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Warp imprint continues to move away from boss-eyed bleepery by releasing the swooning, slow-building 'Knife' (Warp) from Brooklyn wonky rockers Grizzly Bear.
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In this video, exploring the relationship between man and the Earth, animation is incorporated to depict a wounded geologist who is cured by the crystals of a desert deity and returns to the sandy womb of an alluvial plain. The members of Grizzly Bear have cameos as the assistants behind a contraption producing drops of blood, sinking into the sediment as they sing, "Can't you feel the knife?"
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The special effects in this video are pretty impressive (looks like a combination of stop-motion and CGI at work here), and while an increase in budget doesn't always (read: rarely) means an increase in quality, here it renders a pretty stunning, if puzzling, video for Grizzy Bear.
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Of course, I have no idea what the hell is going on in this video, but the visuals are just great: Strange sand creatures with jewels for reproductive organs, tiny members of Grizzly Bear operating some kind of strange meat grinder, you get the idea.
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"Knife" sounds like a love song should sound. There're syrup-thick harmonies (think "I Only Have Eyes For You"), an opening riff with some familiar chord changes (kind of like Everclear's "Santa Monica" actually), a pick-up line that practically demands a slow dance: "I want you to know/When I look in your eyes..." The moment feels so right that it's easy to gloss over the lines about the lies and deceit and naïveté.
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Now that they're rubbing laptops with Squarepusher and Autechre, Grizzly Bear have hauled out the melody; this cut from the band's upcoming Yellow House is built from reverbed "Sweet Jane" guitar and a chewy blue-eyed soul vocal by frontman Edward Droste. The stripped-down jam-band groove is the focus here, not the instrumental detailing. It's a sonic makeunder that My Morning Jacket fans can get behind.
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