Despite performing and recording for almost a decade and a half, Adelaide has never been a touring destination for Grizzly Bear; it took the Adelaide Festival’s Palais (7 March) to rouse Grizzly Bear from their South Australian hibernation.
After a long winter, fans gorged on the sonic honey produced by the Brooklyn-based art-rockers.Touring for Grizzly Bear would not be cheap; their hour and a quarter set featured almost as many instruments as a chamber orchestra: clarinet, flute, saxophone, trumpet, synths, a Wurlitzer and a battery of guitar.
They certainly don’t travel as lightly as Ed Sheeran, who played across the road at Adelaide Oval armed with his just a guitar and a loop pedal.
Click here to read our interview with Grizzly Bear.
The Sheeran gig meant Grizzly Bear didn’t hit the stage until 11pm sans support act, save for the echoing refrains of ‘Thinking Out Loud’ billowing from the adjacent stadium.
As a crushing crowd visibly meandered across the Torrens bridge behind the band, Grizzly’s founder, Ed Droste, joked that they too had rushed from witnessing the ginger-haired folkster and that he would make a cameo later in the set.
He didn’t make an appearance, although if you were drunk and then squinted, bass player Chris Taylor, with his mop of hair, loop pedals and soulful harmonising vocals could have been a doppelganger.
The late start and a strict curfew meant, though, that banter was necessarily truncated, as was the scope of their set list; an encore wasn’t possible. Tracks were predominantly sourced from their most recent releases: 'Painted Ruins', 'Shields' and breakthrough 'Veckatimest'.
The Beach Boys or Fleet Foxes-esque harmonies and jaunty 'Figure 8'-era Elliott Smith-style Wurlitzer of their biggest hit, ‘Two Weeks’, was inevitably a stand-out, as was the sensory overload of the set closing ‘Sun In Your Eyes’.
The chugging synths and duelling vocals of ‘Losing All Sense’ and the morose ‘Mourning Sound’ from the new album were evidence that their songwriting is as sharp and intricate as ever.
Having witnessed the virtuosity of their recorded masterpieces replicated live on stage, Adelaide audiences could not bear to wait another 14 years between visits.
