If Grizzly Bear, in certain circles of the Internet, have recently come up as often for their reportedly modest musical incomes as their ornate, harmony-laden music itself, the Brooklyn indie rockers’ appearance last night on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno at least gave them an incongruous brush with another level of wealth and fame.
After performing new album Shields‘ first two advance tracks, “Sleeping Ute” and “Yet Again,” a couple of months ago on The Colbert Report, this time they played the dizzying, delicately distorted “Speak in Rounds” (via the Audio Perv). Our album reviewer Andy Beta has written about how the track builds up from Christopher Bear’s “prenatal heartbeat drums and Chris Taylor’s chord-organ combers toward a thrilling velocity,” and that was no less true last night, beneath enigmatic vocal interplay between Edward Droste and Daniel Rossen.
As impeccable as the performance might have been though, maybe the most remarkable sight comes in the closing seconds, as the band is greeted by another guest on the show: NFL Hall of Famer and FOX NFL Sunday talking head Terry Bradshaw. Which comes as your regularly scheduled reminder that you should check out SPIN senior editor Christopher R. Weingarten’s recent feature, R.I.P., Brooklyn: How Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, and Dirty Projectors Changed Pop.
