Shields by Grizzly Bear

Shields, Grizzly Bear's fourth album, came out on Warp on September 18, 2012, and it's the sound of the Brooklyn band coming back from six months off with the walls knocked down. Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor produced it, and this time the four of them set out to make a record nobody could claim alone; Daniel Rossen talked about wanting every member to feel like an author.

You can hear it. Rossen and Ed Droste still split the lead vocals, the harmonies still stack up like weather fronts, and Christopher Bear's drums tug everything forward, but the songs sprawl and swerve more than anything on Veckatimest, lush one minute and knotted the next. "Sleeping Ute" and "Yet Again" led the way as singles, and critics fell hard for it. The following year Shields Expanded added session outtakes, demos and remixes, with the eight extra tracks also issued on their own as Shields: B-Sides. Painted Ruins followed in 2017.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.