DANIEL ROSSEN

Grizzly Bear. Lovely Bloke.

Daniel Rossen has enjoyed a wealth of success with his current band Grizzly Bear, due to their knack for creating hauntingly diverse melodies that melt and mould music genres together with staggering ease.

The much anticipated follow-up album after their hugely successful 2009 release Veckatimest is currently being recorded, but the lead singer decided to take a step back – only temporarily – to compile some solo material with his new EP Silent Hour/Golden Mile.

It’s always interesting to sample songs from a single member of such a vibrant and creative contingent such as Grizzly Bear; mainly to see more of an individual musical personality take centre stage. Rossen doesn’t disappoint with his work, delivering what, at first seems a more uncomplicated account of song writing, yet still compellingly laced with dreamy melodies and the ever-present backbone of rock bubbling away. This is what you would expect when listening to the musician’s previous work with the Department Of Eagles and Grizzly Bear. However, there’s a refreshing feel to his new creations because of the sole leadership in the creation process, forging a sometimes-uneasy, yet soul-stirring range of truly beautiful songs. As with fellow Bear Chris Taylor’s CANT project, Rossen proves that sometimes it’s good to go it alone.

Crack caught up with the pioneer of psychedelic pop to chat about working with new people, nearly quitting music, and his home movies gracing YouTube.

When and why did you decide to put some solo work together away from Grizzly Bear?

I work on songs all the time and sometime over the last year a few songs started to come together, and I decided that the songs really made sense when together as a unit. I just thought it would be a new challenge and a new project to put something together all on my own.

What do the other guys from Grizzly Bear think of your solo work?

(Laughs) We’re all together as a family and supportive of each other so they were nice. It’s not really a strange thing for me to be recording my own music; it was more just like the final stage process of finishing the arrangements and choosing something that was worthy of being released. Not having anyone else around didn’t really help out with that process, but I suppose that’s the extra challenge in a way: to know whether it was any good.

Having no one else’s input must have made it more difficult, but was it more empowering to you as a songwriter?

I suppose in a way I had to have faith in my own filter to know whether I actually believed in what I was doing. It was certainly a nice challenge and a nice step forward. A lot of the stuff that I’ve brought to Grizzly Bear in the past were things I worked on quite a bit on my own anyway. In the past I had such a terrible recording setup at home that it was virtually impossible to record anything that sounded remotely decent. A big part of this EP was to do something that was catching the first takes of ideas, without feeling the need to review them or question them. If a song came together, the idea was to get it recorded within a day or two.

So is it a lot quicker to write music when working alone?

It can be yeah; certainly recording can go much faster as you can just blaze through the songs. It’s funny because the actual EP came together over a year and a half, but each one of those songs was recorded in like a day or something. I didn’t even think I was going to release the first song on the EP, but I waited around for a year and a half and decided ‘yeah it’s still decent, I guess I can use this.’

So who did you first show your solo work to?

I played a lot for Fred Nicolaus from the Department of Eagles, I play a lot for him because he has a very solid critical ear and he feels no need to congratulate me, which is really good you know. It’s hard for friends because they can only be supportive; it’s hard to get a straight opinion from them. That’s the beauty of this project – you have to trust your own instincts, which can be very difficult at times.

Before Grizzly Bear and the Department of Eagles, what originally inspired you to start writing and performing? I actually found a video of you on YouTube performing some Elvis at the age of 5, so it seems that the urge to perform has been with you for a long time.

Yeah, I know that the video is around (laughs). You know I didn’t start writing music until I was about 18 or 19. I started studying music as a sort of jazz/classical nerd when I was younger and then gave it up when I went to school and decided that music was not for me, I thought I didn’t have anything to contribute to it in a depressed teenager way. Slowly in my early 20s I came back to it and spontaneously started writing songs on my own, and then I played to a few close friends. I played to Fred and Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear. It was a lucky coincidence that I happened to know them.

So, who is responsible for uploading that video?

My girlfriend. Whatever I don’t mind. She just kind of did it. It could be seen as a little invasive but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just me dancing around like an idiot. One of my first musical memories was listening to Jailhouse Rock and dancing around my living room, which, as you know, is well documented.

You said before that you quit music for a while, what do you think you would be doing if you weren’t writing and performing songs?

I really don’t know, I mean I ask myself that sometimes. I think I might have ended up working on some really hippy dippy organic farm. Not to be real obvious about it, but that sort of seems the direction things would have gone. I was really interested in biology and linguistics, and I studied loads of things in college, but I didn’t really have the motivation to really apply myself much beyond music. If I didn’t have music I would probably be some sort of burnout. Maybe that’s selling myself short but it probably would be true. I was a bit of a nature boy in my early 20s and I could see that would be what I’d end up doing if I had had no music project to work on.

With your new EP, you worked with a lot of different artists – what was it like working with different people, especially Dr Dog drummer Eric Slick on your new track Golden Mile?

It was really crazy how I got to work with Eric Slick. When I did that one track I was just at a recording studio in Philadelphia and he was a friend of one of the engineers. He just showed up and worked on that song. We thought it would be fun for him to play drums and it went really well. I mean, it’s always refreshing to hear how other people play outside of my usual stylistic references of my band mates. Working with other people like that was much easier; the pressure is way lower, which is refreshing.

So who’s your favourite musician to work with?

I mean generally speaking I would say Chris Taylor, because he’s an incredible player, probably the best player I’ve ever met in my life. I’ve always loved recording with him.

I’ve read that you’re a big fan of Nick Drake, would you say he’s a big inspiration of yours?

He’s definitely an early inspiration, but it’s funny because I don’t really listen to his music anymore and I don’t think of him in a conscious way. I know that he had such an extreme effect on me as a kid; the way I thought of guitar playing and song writing was definitely shaped by what he did.

Are you thinking of touring to showcase your solo work?

I can’t really do that, I mean we’re in the middle of recording with Grizzly Bear so I can’t really run off and do a bunch of shows by myself. It would be very irresponsible so I’m not going to do it.

How is the recording going for the new Grizzly album?

It’s going good – slow but well. We’re hoping to have something out this year but I can’t make any promises because we haven’t got any dates, but we’re trying our best.

A lot of people have told us they play Grizzly Bear when they’re going to partake in a bit of bedroom ‘dancing’, how do you feel about that?

I mean whatever; I don’t have a problem with it. It’s always kind of hilarious when people get so explicit when they tell us how they use our records – it’s ok with me.

– – – – – – – – – –

http://www.warp.net/records/daniel-rossen

Words: Ben Perks