Track-by-Track Review of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest

Seems like I mostly experience this album as “really funny.” Not sure what effect this album would have on me if I were severely depressed. Seems like an album I might feel extreme, toneless aversion toward in times of loneliness or depression.

1. SOUTHERN POINT

Sounds “freaking funny” to me for some reason. Seems like I should be eating powdered doughnuts if I’m listening to this song. Seems like a possible anthem for overweight people, but one that would cause everyone involved, even those who initially supported the idea, to feel unsarcastically averse toward themselves for “what they’ve become involved with.” Grinning right now while listening to it.

2. TWO WEEKS

I imagine someone “breaking out” into this song after returning from an “insane” lobster-catching trip in Alaska.

3. ALL WE ASK

Sounds “really comical.” Seems like the unseemly product of the world’s 14 “most promising” child prodigies, ages 5 to 8, who’ve been asked to work together for 8 days to “create a song people will like today.”

4. FINE FOR NOW

Seems “humorous” but in a serious manner. Like how some situations are serious but become funny in retrospect. I imagine people getting angry at me for thinking this is funny. Then apologizing for getting angry at me. Then feeling even angrier due to now also resenting me for causing them to apologize for something they don’t feel like they should have to apologize for.

5. CHEERLEADER

Seems “really hard” for me not to imagine myself moving in an intensely robot-like manner while listening to this song. Seems like the perfect song for robots. A music video for this could be an unmoving shot of a toaster on a table. Seems like it would be impossible to not imagine the toaster “dancing.”

6. DORY

First thoughts: “so funny…for some reason…” Just thought “jesus…” at ~40 seconds. Just thought “so fucked up…” in a somewhat earnest manner. Seems like I want to laugh, but I feel afraid, or something. Seems like it would be complicatedly scary, in a manner that it would seem “horrifying,” maybe, if this suddenly began playing at the part in The Sixth Sense where it shows dead people “hanging” in rafters.

7. READY, ABLE

Sounds like a song Adam Sandler thinks exists only in his head and spends $40,000, over 11 years and 6 psychologists, to successful repress. One night he hears it on the radio while in his car at a Taco Bell drive-thru. Depending on the director he then either stares ahead with a neutral facial expression or screams extremely loudly as the camera “pulls back,” showing the entire city block, then city, then state, then Earth. Seems like this scenario would work equally effectively if it happened in a Charlie Kaufman movie, a Ron Howard movie, or Adam Sandler’s actual life.

8. ABOUT FACE

Seems “chill” so far. Feeling myself “waiting for this song to begin.” Feeling myself accepting that, based on how I’ve initially interpreted this song, it probably won’t ever begin. Am now focused on [what seems to be “nothing”].

9. HOLD STILL

Seems like I’m fixated on weakly considering if this album “should” have only 10 songs. The other 2 songs could be put on an EP or be “saved” for compilations.

10. WHILE YOU WAIT FOR THE OTHERS

Imagining myself waking at 4:30AM to this song being played “extremely loudly” in my room with no discernible source. Imagining myself “screaming as I have never screamed before” while feeling 100% focused on being amused at what I’m doing.

11. I LIVE WITH YOU

Feels like I’m a butterfly “fluttering around” the foreground of a tiny waterfall in the first animated/silent-movie from Disney.

12. FOREGROUND

Sounds like a song I “absentmindedly” made the “first draft” of on Garageband in 2008 late one night while in an extended parodic mood after pouring ~3oz Agave Nectar from the bottle into my mouth “for something to do.”