Keeping track of nine musicians is a chore. Park Slope’s Stars Like Fleas are nine at least, and they recently played a show with an 18-piece choir. They’ve got a harpist and one or two computers. At a recent outdoor show in July, drummer Ryan Sawyer shunned his kit and banged on tree limbs. The bands’ sound—a sprawling mix of folk, Americana, free improv and jazz—is all buck and twitch. Bareback riding can hurt, but when it works, the band can transform a dingy room into something as gorgeous and sweeping as the Great Plains.
While Stars Like Fleas are definitively outdoorsy, Grizzly Bear, another Brooklyn band, is parlor music. Their 2004 debut Horn of Plenty was a fog bank of heavy-lidded folk recorded primarily by bandleader Ed Droste while holed up and po-faced in his Greenpoint apartment. While Horn was later dressed by Droste’s friend Christopher Bear, the final product still felt like heartbreak with a head cold.
After Horn they formed a proper band with multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor and guitarist/vocalist Daniel Rossen and let some light in. Recorded in Droste’s mother’s Cape Cod living room, Yellow House does what a lot of experimental albums can’t—it keeps its heart close to the surface. While taking tribal percussion, vocal and live sonic manipulation cues from its more tempestuous Brooklyn colleagues (Animal Collective, Liars, TV on the Radio), Grizzly Bear’s foundation is relatively easy to follow: psychedelic, melancholy Americana with flecks of country and Phil Spector grandeur.
“Knife,” for all its sonic warping, is a ’50s-style prom ballad; a dumbly gorgeous song that draws on the dreamy edges of the Beach Boys and the Velvet Underground. But “Knife,” like much of Yellow House, feels like a baldly needed emotional hug. The V.U. would sooner turn away while tears rolled down your face; with the Beach Boys, you’d be the one cradling them. It’s not all cuddly paws, though—the eerie waltz of “Marla” sounds like a ghost got loose in the attic, and shutters bang in the storm of “Lullabye.” Droste’s songwriting is primarily a vessel for the mood and cadence that really makes Yellow House boom. In 1979, the avant-punk band Pere Ubu sang, “The windows reverberate/The walls have ears.” Yellow House feels like that—possessed and wonderful.
Sept. 26. Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie Sts.), 212-533-2111; 8, $13.
