Album Review: Grizzly Bear - Shields

Like sharp shards of glass cutting through the boisterous clatter of percussion, Daniel Rossen's riff on opener, Sleeping Ute, is a magnificent beginning to a purposefully inexact, energetic tempest of an album. And not ones to rest on their laurels, the Brooklyn quintet have followed up 2009's beautiful Veckatimest with an album filled with roaring synths, jarring percussion and soaring harmonies, all filled with a new, charming rawness.

Songs like Speak In Rounds and Half Gate fuse the wafting vocals and delicate harmonies the boys are known for with a new sense of urgency. Every build up within a song seems faster, louder and rougher, and yet seamlessly flows from high to low with perfect ease. Shields is the first album on which Rossen and Ed Droste have written songs together, and the collaboration is evident in the layered melodies and synchronised instrumentals of the album. Yet Again once more showcases Rossen's talents as a guitarist, and you can't help but think that the new vitality of Rossen's always-impeccable guitar work is due to this new writing partnership.

This is just a beautiful album to listen to. Sun In Your Eyes, the last track of the album, is an embodiment of everything that works on this album. Spiralling and roaring highs transform elegantly into the quietest and most delicate of lows – one second a combustion of percussion and synths, the next a fragile piano solo – all harnessed tenderly by beautiful vocals. A remarkable song.

Whilst Veckatimest was full of initial standout tracks, Shields is more about the journey than reaching those highlights quickly and clearly. With every listen, the intricacies of this album, both instrumental and lyrical, reveal themselves in such beautiful, colourful ways that you just want to start from the beginning again.