Shields

 At first listen it's easy to say there is a lot of Veckatimest here, but Grizzly Bear isn't pulling a Beach House or xx by distilling their sound. Here they're not trying to do too much, but just the right amount. They've incorporated the parts we loved from Veckatimest and stripped back some of the production and opened themselves up to insert some new ideas and experiments-let their hair down a bit(a page from the Spoon playbook). It kinda gives off the energy of a live performance. Even with the stripped back production it manages to retain a expansive psychedelic vibe that only enhances the live, or maybe alive feeling to the album(check out the groovy jazz inspired break down at the end What's Wrong). This album's accessibility and inclusiveness will definitely go down easier than their previous albums. On Shields there are still explosive clashes, but unlike on Veckatimest of Yellow House, where they seem to express a momentary helpless frustration that fades back into complacency or a bubbling up of painful memories, here the clashes are present but are replaced by or built onto steady beats that move forward in spite of past failures and daunting tasks ahead(Half Gate, A Simple Answer, Yet Again).    
 The album as a whole seems to ask what do we do instead of just stewing in our pain, regret, and past failures? On Shields hope comes from the space put between problems in order to deal with them, and the struggles and set backs that come with making that space and how we fill it the more we gain. 
Personal notes:The Hunt gives me some Yours to Keep by Guided By Voices (Bee Thousand) vibes. And I know these guys have said they've listened to movie soundtracks for inspiration, which I feel like on Yet Again I hear some synth hits circa The Never Ending Story soundtrack(maybe it's just me though haha)! Even some rattling contraptions in the background on Whats Wrong that could be borrowed from Andrew Bird or Fleet Foxes' The Shrine/An Argument.