Painted Ruins

Grizzly Bear never broke up. In the six years that have passed since their most recent shows, the four members who first drifted into the group two decades ago as loose friends and even total strangers—Chris Bear, Ed Droste, Daniel Rossen, Chris Taylor—have drifted out into other things. They’ve made other music, pursued other careers, cultivated other families, lived other lives beyond the bounds of being this band. And now, for the first time since 2019, these four musicians and friends will drift back into Grizzly Bear, to test the ties that made them one of this century’s most engrossing and beloved acts and see where else those old connections may yet lead.

That sort of open-ended approach, after all, is what still makes Grizzly Bear one of this young century’s defining acts. Twenty years ago, they quickly morphed from a lo-fi songwriter project to a full band with an instantly singular sound, uncanny harmonies slipping around arrangements that paired the glow of a chamber orchestra to the grit of a rock group. They helped to redefine what was possible within indie rock by balancing lushness with looseness, a technical excellence with an emotional openness. Their musical traces remain ubiquitous, bits of their unorthodox perspective on sound and texture now part of the firmament. Hearing these songs live in 2025 will feel less like shaking hands with the past, then, than seeing their fingerprints in the present, as if for the first time.