Dripping In The Cracks

Packaging “Water’s Edge”

Grizzly Bear recently played a run of shows in New York City, their first gigs in a long time. I didn’t attend, but their reemergence prompted me to listen to their albums Veckatimest and Shields for the first time in ages. My major takeaway was that Grizzly Bear is much more my sort of thing now than when those records first came out in 2009 and 2012. Those albums have subtle charms – the melodies are lovely but understated, the vocals are light on character but very strong with harmony and nuanced phrasing, and the most striking aspect of the music is consistently how beautifully and organically the sounds are captured and mixed. I would’ve identified these strengths in my late 20s, but I wouldn’t have valued them quite so highly. I wanted oomph and big personalities then, in part because that’s just a lot easier to write about.

I say this because Packaging, a duo of musicians from Seattle and Denver, share a lot of positive qualities with Grizzly Bear. And this being the case, they’re also not easy to write about! Their debut pulls together a lot of tasteful influences and shows off a lot of well-articulated musical ideas, but there’s not a lot of personality in the vocals. This isn’t a bad thing – the vocals sound nice, they suit the songs, a bigger singer would likely disrupt the careful balance of the production. And it’s clear to me that the sound is the point of this music. Sure, there’s lyrics and recurring themes, but I seems clear to me that when these guys were working on “Water’s Edge,” they spent a lot more time thinking about the particular tone of the central keyboard and the exact brightness of the arpeggiated acoustic guitar part. These are certainly the elements that suck me in and linger in my mind, and even when it comes to the vocals, I’m thinking about the contrast between the dry takes on the verses and the touch of reverb on the bridge.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Sorry “Candle”

“Candle” is sung from the POV of an actual candle, which leads to some good extended metaphors about dripping wax and time to burn. But the interesting thing to me is how Asha Lorenz anthropomorphizes this inanimate object but retains its total indifference. She filters that into her vocal performance, singing the jaunty melody with a bit of haughty attitude, and clearly having some fun spitting out the “I’m a cunt, I’ll be a cunt again” refrain.

Buy it from Bandcamp.