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compiled by Erin Sheehy

FRESH BAKED
Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
2009 | Warp Records
N/A (but pretty rad)

So here I am listening to Veckatimest, and I feel like a stupid dick. I feel like a loudmouthed sixteen-year old. And I don’t like sixteen-year olds. This is all an issue of hindsight, of course, which I’ll explain. In fact, I think I’ll go ahead take a nice fat paragraph to do that right now.

I was sixteen-ish when I first heard Sticky Fingers and In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. I think both of these albums are perfect. They’re two of my favorite albums ever. Whenever I think of Sticky Fingers now (and here’s that hindsight bit), I instinctually remember, in that long ago time, telling a friend, before I’d ever actually given it an honest listen, that it was a lousy record ‘except for “Wild Horses.”’ Right? You see where I’m going here? I am cursed to relive that moment forever. No matter what happens, I’ll always have been that sixteen-year old kid who, in an effort to seem cool, not only pretended to know Sticky Fingers inside-and-out but also said that it was only a worthwhile album because of, God-save-me, “Wild Horses.”

The day I first listened to In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, an album whose influence on my life has been pretty incalculable, I also brought home American Football’s American Football. And – this is difficult to admit, even now – I thought American Football was totally superior. Like, I thought American Football RULED, and I thought Neutral Milk Hotel was just whatevs. And that’s an unforgivable thing. If I were Jeff Mangum, and I thought that there was one single person in the world who thought that American Football was a better band than mine, I’d have given up too. So I’m sorry, Jeff.

None of this is to imply that Veckatimest is an album of Sticky Fingers or Aeroplane caliber, but it is really, really, really good – and I feel stupid for having so drastically misheard Grizzly Bear for so long.
More on Grizzly Bear | Veckatimest