I will begin this post by openly affirming that everyone who contributes to this blog at this time can't fucking stand Grizzly Bear. Put more specifically, I think what we really can't stand is Grizzly Bear's success. I don't know about Jon and Keegan (although I sort of do because we all had a bit of a collective epiphany the last time it came up in conversation), but I see Grizzly Bear as a band that people like because a bunch of critics say everyone should like them...even though I have yet to meet someone who actually likes their music. It's sort of how I used to feel about Radiohead before I got into them....but I really don't think I'll ever change my mind about Grizzly Bear. I've seen them live, I've given both their albums ample chances to actually impress me and give me at least something memorable that I can focus on and say "well at least there are one or two really good songs/moments/anythings." But no. Those moments don't exist with Grizzly Bear. Ever. And therein lies the fucking problem. But everyone goes on and on about how perfectly their songs are crafted, how great the production is, yada yada.
I'm not saying Grizzly Bear completely fucking sucks. I might think it sometimes, but I wouldn't say that (except maybe to Jon and Keegan). At the very least, they have some interesting harmonic tendencies. No, what I'm saying is that Grizzly Bear's success (much like Animal Collective's, in my opinion) is really undeserved, and revolves much more around a few overly influential dickwaving critics than the actual music. If I hear one more person say that Grizzly Bear is a band of "indie rock saviors," I'm going to punch him in the face.
Which is where we get to The Morning Benders. This band definitely has Grizzly Bear influences, but it keeps those tendencies under wraps and uses them as accents that complement their music instead of allowing them to take over. In short, the Morning Benders are what Grizzly Bear would sound like if they were worth listening to:
Their second album, Big Echo, was released a week ago, and I've listened to it 5 times already just in the past 12 hours. Grizzly Bear's bassist/producer Chris Taylor helped out with the studio mixing, which is the perfect role for him and which does add a lot to the entire work without bastardizing it (a quick side-note to this is that listening to Big Echo has fully convinced me that picking the right mixer is easily the biggest make-or-break decision for a band. Just as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would have been a folksy misstep had it not been for Jim O'Rourke, I can see this album having been somewhat of a bore had it not been for Taylor).
In the end, I think there are several reasons I really like this band. First, I think their sound, unlike Grizzly Bear's, matches the area they hail from. Grizzly Bear has always sounded like a New York operation blindly grasping at a sound that will appeal to people out west; The Morning Benders are from fucking Berkeley, and you can tell. And I like that. You get a perfect sense for the surroundings out of which that the music has grown. The release date of the album also couldn't have been better: this is the best spring/summer anthem I have heard in...well, we all went to school in Seattle, so it's been a longassed time. But most importantly, I find myself constantly hearing moments in their songs where I think to myself "Wow. This is what I always wished I could get out of Grizzly Bear, but with this I don't have to try so goddamn hard." It seems far more effortless for this group, and I sort of hope that Chris Taylor walked out of the studio at the end having learned just as much as did the band members themselves.
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