Grizzly Bear’s Rossen plays in his ‘new hometown’
Concert will be part of Noise for NOW
Daniel Rossen has loved New Mexico ever since he first visited 10 years ago. The guitarist for the rock band Grizzly Bear described being drawn to the landscape and feeling as if the Land of Enchantment wasn’t a part of the country, “one of the last really unique cultural areas of the U.S.”
with its history, architecture and culture.
For the past three years, he has been splitting time between Santa Fe and New York with his wife, artist Amelia Bauer, a Santa Fe native.
“It’s very peaceful and it’s very outside of the rush of the music world, which can get a little tedious,” Rossen said of Santa Fe. “It can get a little, obviously, monotonous. But it’s nice to come back to a place that is so culturally different than what you’re experiencing on the road.”
Rossen will visit what he described on his Instagram page as his “new hometown” with his band for a show tonight at Santa Fe Brewing Co. The concert is a part of
the Noise for NOW series, an initiative that benefits local grassroots organizations providing services for women or striving to protect reproductive health care rights, particularly access to abortion.
Noise for NOW put on 2017 Santa Fe shows featuring bands such as Tune Yards and Fleet Foxes.
“We liked the idea of trying to get the music out to Santa Fe,” he said. “It’s tough to get a lot of music there. So that was one piece of the idea of this project that we’re working on.”
Grizzly Bear was formed in Brooklyn in the early 2000s with lead singer Ed Droste, percussionist Christopher Bear and bass player Chris Taylor. The band immediately gained notice. Its first album as a quartet including Rossen was “Yellow House,” which made the 2006 Top Ten lists in both The New York Times and Pitchfork.
The band has been touring over the past year in support of its latest album, “Painted Ruins,” released in 2017 and Grizzly Bear’s first since 2012’s “Shields.”
The album’s songs, according to Rossen, ended up being made more collaboratively as a group and are less introspective than the group’s previous work. He said that means fewer songs that are “purely autobiographical” or about a specific person’s emotional experience, with more “external narratives.”
“We also just follow whatever is feeling good, whatever feels right; that’s the direction we follow,” he said. “We never set out to make a record any one particular way. We just let it reveal itself to us as we work on it. And that’s how its always felt, I guess.
“As we’ve gotten older and moved to different places, it’s taken more intention to get together and try different song ideas. There’s a little more discussion. It’s a little different than it used to be, but we were very happy with how this one came out.”
Rossen, who’s also toured and recorded as a solo act, said that in the future he’s interested in working on more acoustic and harmony-based music. But he said that could change as Grizzly Bear starts working on new material.
He and his bandmates are just trying to enjoy their last couple of shows together this month on the final leg of a tour. Rossen said it could be at least five years before Grizzly Bear returns to the road.
Getting together to create music has become less of a focal point for the band members compared to when they were in their early twenties.
“It has a different flavor now, which I think is OK,” he said. “It’s a bit more of a struggle to keep the dynamic working and keep us getting together in a regular sort of way that we can keep making music together.
“But we will. We definitely will. With time.”