Silent Hour / Golden Mile - EP

The 2012 EP by Grizzly Bear's Daniel Rossen, Silent Hour/Golden Mile, features material intended for the next Grizzly Bear album. It's a refocus for Rossen, centering on the emotive and artsy underpinnings that made the Bear's earliest material so engrossing. Always in danger of being overdone by ornate musicianship, Rossen's songs are here kept to a minimum of fuss (by his standards). The overpronounced bass guitar of "Up on High" adds to the attractively askew arrangement, which also features orchestration that's kept tidily in the background. "Silent Song" adds slide guitar pinched from the George Harrison school, while "Golden Mile" goes a stretch further in evoking the ex-Beatle's solo work, with a vocal and arrangement that could place it on All Things Must Pass. "Saint Nothing" is curiously reminiscent of Harrison's bandmate Paul McCartney, with a piano ballad that sounds like a lost early-'70s deep album cut. Despite these obvious reference points, Rossen is a distinct individual who's arguably at his best on his own.