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There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this album and on the contrary, Grizzly Bear has clearly made the year’s best album.
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100Veckatimest offers more than just an inventive exercise in collage: It’s like hearing the past few centuries of music playing in symphony, which sounds--thrillingly and reassuringly--like the future.
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93An Album this deep-hearted and digestible call out for mass-consumption. And the more people who hear this record, the better. [Spring 2009, p.90]
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Underneath the orchestral flourishes and children’s choirs, beneath even the frequent textural shifts and melodic detours, are a set of melodies that find new ways to cut straight to the listener every time.
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This is a superb record, a spirted illustration of sepia-tinged Americana that feels linked inextricably with Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavillion" as one of the not only most hyped, but also finest records of 2009. [Spring 2009, p.66]
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90This one is probably the closest rival to Merriweather Post Pavilion we’ve heard this year.
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Really, the only fault of this record is that its most arrestingly beautiful minute is its final one: everything that comes before, however brilliant it is at the time, pales once that choir swells, just for a few too-fleeting seconds.
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90Really, in a world far too concerned with backstories and far too lacking in good old dedication to craft, Grizzly Bear's just about as boring as they come: four guys who very quietly set out to make a fantastic record. And so they did.
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90Combine some of the best pipes in the game with Grizzly Bear's newfound comfort in executing the grand & epic, and you've got Veckatimest; a total triumph that threatens to dwarf their own previous "House."
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90Ambitious yet restrained, elegant yet exciting, Veckatimest is an endlessly-rewarding album which seems destined to vie with Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion for the title of the year's best.
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90Veckatimest works like a cash-back bonus, the more you give in to it, the grander the return.
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90All bets aren’t necessarily off in terms of whether or not Grizzly Bear have hit their plateau--recall that we did this with "Yellow House" in 2006; oops--but it’s hard to imagine them giving us more to enjoy in one sweeping statement than they have here.
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It plainly improves Grizzly Bear’s sound, and lends itself well to multiple spins, because each repeated listen reveals another perfectly crafted shard you missed on the last go-round.
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A feast for repeated listening, Veckatimest yields the kind of eccentricities a fan can spend months winding and unwinding.
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It’s a sophisticated work, delicately and meticulously crafted, and its effete pleasantness lends itself as well to "Late Night" performances as "New Yorker" coverage.
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85While Veckatimest contains just over fifty-two minutes of some exceptional music, it lacks one critical component that's essential to any form of art: emotion.
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If the second half brings diminishing returns, it's still more than worth the trip.