Grizzly Peak, by The Dodos

Grizzly Peak

by The Dodos

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Thomas Gierach There are some great songs on here. Their last album was more varied and interesting though. Favorite track: Sunrise/Sunset.

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1.	Annie 03:42	lyrics	buy track
Slowing down Was not what I had planned But here we are A single hitch With nothing left to fight about Was that the argument? Oh Annie, could it be something That I had been missing all along? Annie, can you forgive me We were going to ride it til the end Did you all forget It’s just a game That can’t be won against And now you so just want to say To hell with it, oh well Could have been something Annie, can you forgive me Were were going to ride it til the end Communication ending Communication The show is about to start The show is about to start Could have been something Condescension always there to keep us from each others voices You should have been there to hear the voices It’s always been a give and take You should have been there to hear the voices Just a bit of give and take
2.	Pale Horizon 04:03	lyrics	buy track
Mirrors of each other Have no end or beginning Confiscate one another tangled up in the middle Distance From the earth Feels like a dead end Better get some distance between us Step back a moment Just need to see who we are I only want to witness Remember when we only wrote Used to see the words before we could hear them I can only see what you don’t and now we have a witness Don’t think I can let this go Even if I’ve been here before Does everyone already know The places that we’re heading Even if this loop is closed Think I gotta run it again This can’t be a dead end This can’t be a dead end Am I staring at Reflections of your mind Thought that we were way beyond the pale horizon Am I looking back I can’t believe my eyes All I ever wanted was to break this passage Distance From the earth Feels like a dead end
3.	With A Guitar 03:48 video	lyrics	buy track
Cold motherfucker You stuck around just a waiting for this Knew it’d come down to couple of tricks Whatever made you so patient? Was it the face of another Handing it off to a couple of kids You knew much better but you couldn’t resist Hearing a voice so familiar You make me feel small Does it make you feel big too? You make me feel small Does it make you feel big too? I guess I’ll have to fight you with a guitar I guess I’ll have to fight you with a guitar Me and my shadow Still making circles at the need to impress Pushing a rock just to see it go past Whatever’s at the horizon Didn’t you know you were bitter Starting to think it was nothing to chance It’s just a muscle that you needed to flex And here I am in amazement You make me feel small Does it make you feel big too? You make me feel small Does it make you feel big too? I guess I’ll have to fight you with a guitar I guess I’ll have to fight you with a guitar I never had much to say but I always said it with a guitar I never had much to say but I always said it with a guitar
4.	The Atlantic 04:26	lyrics	buy track
You’ve gone off into battle with nothing but blistering rage was looking for something to rattle got nowhere beyond this cage My eyes can’t see the handle It’s fallen off of the door I know that it’s just a shadow of something that came before I see right through this mantle I still believe in you I see right through this mantle I still believe the distance between As you were standing there across the Atlantic ocean we couldn’t find our way across the Atlantic ocean I’m talking low but I’m thinking loud Should I get away from this? But I see you there and it gives me pause I know better than to quit, but I wait I see right through this mantle I still believe in you I see right through this mantle I’m looking at the distance between As you were standing there across the Atlantic ocean we couldn’t find our way across the Atlantic ocean I know it’s about to change but I don’t think I can see it the world’s about to change but I don’t think I can feel it
5.	Eyes Open 04:47	lyrics	buy track
Trust Is that what you thought you were waiting for Counting up disasters you had in store thoughts you’ve been containing from wanting more Emptiness is something to behold Is that what you wanted to be? Everyone? Remnants left of what you were before Innocence is something to be was it meant for you to not belong If I ask you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love If I held you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love If I told you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love If I gave you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love, wide open A trigger without a gun, sights open I know that you wanna shut, eyes open A trigger without a gun, eyes open The difference commitment makes the payout was not what was expected afraid that it would break you fashion a placebo I saw it was a fake but even that has merit lest we go on just repeating Trust Is that what you thought you were waiting for Counting up disasters you had in store thoughts you’ve been containing from wanting more Emptiness is something to behold Is that what you wanted to be? Everyone? Remnants left of what you were before Innocence is something to be was it meant for you to not belong If I ask you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love If I held you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love If I told you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love If I gave you enough you’d still tear up the ones you love, wide open
6.	Sustainer 03:22	lyrics	buy track
Wake up wake up too upset wake up wake up too upset wake up wake up And I know that you’ve got your stinger and your serpent tongue’s out to tame us but you’re down in the mud, the painter and the song will be my sustainer and I know what you want but I don’t know if I can give it back it’s not what you think it’s not what you see hopeless isn’t a place for you and me hopeless isn’t a place I can be Wake up wake up and you think that you’ve got a savior but you’re falling back on retainer and I know that you want to blame her but the song will be my sustainer and I know what you want but I don’t know if I can give it back I can give it back I can give it back
7.	Sunrise/Sunset 03:52	lyrics	buy track
Who’s looking after us same as it ever was when you’re faced with sunrise sunset Who’s gonna beat the rush probably none of us if you’re counting sunrise sunset What is this picture of you never saw who it was that you’re stuck with sunrise sunset when is it going to stop believing the stupid shit you imagined sunrise sunset Don’t leave us in vain we’re all you have it’s just as you wished don’t push us away you’ll take it back you’ve waited for this Stop running away while standing still You’re looking away from what’s been here What did you do to us Setting a trap upon which I’m standing Sunrise Sunset Who’s gonna take this on I never want any of this illusion Sunrise Sunset What’s gonna hold this up Same as it ever was probably nothing Sunrise Sunset Probably had enough Can’t look away for once So I stick with Sunrise Sunset Don’t leave us in vain we’re all you have it’s just as you wished don’t push us away you’ll take it back you’ve waited for this Stop running away while standing still You’re looking away from what’s been here What did you get for the summer Was it all that you wanted to get for summer
8.	Quiet Voices 04:09	lyrics	buy track
Cold exit How to know to begin I felt you were always at an impasse It’s not that you had some sort of insight It’s just the passage of time and patience Long distance Where to know to begin The weight that we feel is not the impact I had no idea we could be that to find you’re only a sheep in a wolfpack Bitter flowers bloom You and I what we’ve been through You didn’t ask nor did I Broken hearts us two Some voices they don’t know what it is to have an idea but no attention a maze that we’re building from the inside a rush to flee from it where’s an exit Some voices I don’t hear what they think The more that we feel the less they can act we waited until we hear a feedback I need to know that you want what you have Bitter flowers bloom You and I what we’ve been through You didn’t ask nor did I Broken hearts us two
9.	Unicorn 03:26	lyrics	buy track
I keep going back To the moments stuck on repeat If I’m all that you will have Lately I’ve felt so misleading I preferred you when To think I had say in any I was searching for the path You were looking for any chance to lose your way Unicorn you were looking for a unicorn Please take off this weight Wasn’t mine so much to begin with You say nothing’s there at all Then why do things feel so damn heavy Disappointment rings on an endless chain of bandage Always punch above your weight I was only drawing the walls inside the maze Unicorn you were looking for a unicorn
10.	The Surface 03:32	lyrics	buy track
Tired, almost out of ideas I might be starting to think this was an accident Surface tension how do I fake my death From the top of the edge lies none of the consequence What an ineffectual way to think Is it over our heads Looking for a theory of everything And I can't help notice you're always Asking what do I get No imagination in it From the top of the chain To the bottom again When u thought u were done You scratch the surface What'd you think you would gain If you go it alone When again and again You scratch the surface Endless cycle of generate When it's all you've been fed Consensual acts of vanity What an intellectual argument Cause we haven't been here quite long enough to have these Conversations I can't help wondering if This is the only way there is To get through to you All of this happened so fast You and I are close But not as far away Where do we go from here The question It's not the one to answer Where do we go from here The question It's not the one to answer And it feels this might be the actual death And it feels this might be the actual death And it feels eventual From the top of the chain To the bottom again When u thought u were done You scratch the surface What'd you think you would gain If you go it alone When again and again You scratch the surface

about

For over 15 years, The Dodos have been careening, almost recklessly, towards some perfect ideal of how The Dodos should sound. First formed with the intention of creating a record that felt and sounded how the inside of a guitar might, the band have spent the intervening years sprinting towards that platonic ideal. The propulsion of that chase has always been palpable, even in the duo’s strangest, quietest moments — a gasping thrill conjured as if metallurgically from the interplay between virtuosically fingerpicked guitar and bracingly intricate drumming. Now, after so long, finally: Grizzly Peak. The eighth album by Meric Long and Logan Kroeber still plays as if in freefall, but things are different this time. Meditative and sometimes painful in its emotional excavation, over the course of ten anthemic, gorgeously-rendered tracks, Grizzly Peak reveals itself as that place Long and Kroeber were always desperately trying to find.

As he was toying with the beginnings of what would become Grizzly Peak, Long began to feel the early twinges of arthritis in his fingers. Anyone familiar with Long’s style — an aggressive, rhythmic, weighted approach to fingerpicking developed and perfected over the past 15 years — will understand that this is akin to a runner feeling their legs wear down beyond repair, or the lungs of a brass player beginning to atrophy: an unfair, natural decay that bears immense, life-changing weight. “Guitar has always been my ticket out from feeling worthless, insecure — perhaps I never quite grew out of that moment in my adolescence where I discovered playing the guitar made me feel better than what my mind or others told me,” Long says. “It also became such a huge part of identity, that I probably latched on to it a little too much, and I guess feeling the beginnings of arthritis was sort of a sign of the impermanence of that identity. If I can't play the guitar anymore — the way that, at least in my own mind, defined me so much — then what else am I?”

That driving force, then, animates Grizzly Peak. Although The Dodos have always been a band enamored, somewhat, with the idea of what it means to be ‘The Dodos’ — a duo for whom their own music provides inspiration enough — Grizzly Peak is, perhaps, the first Dodos record to look back, to take stock of Long and Kroeber’s life as one entity. (How dryly funny, and how fittingly literary, that a band in seemingly constant motion would find its ideal form to be in looking to the past.) On the wistful, gut-wrenching opener “Annie,” Long intones, in that anthemic, ever-familiar tone: “The show is about to start.” It’s an overture to the opera of The Dodos’ life, a warning and an invitation that the music enclosed therein will be challenging, true, and, befitting a band who have built such an edifice over the past near-two-decades, incredibly hard-won.

“Annie,” which starts small and builds until it’s one of The Dodos’ brightest, most bombastic songs ever, is a kind of statement of intent for Grizzly Peak. “Annie,” all cavernous boom and warm, enveloping melody, reaches that place of what the inside of a guitar might sound like, wholly and triumphantly. At the same time, the song introduces themes Long grapples with over the course of the entire album: forgiveness, regret, shame, and, above all, profound, enduring love. It roils with the discontent of knowing things could have been different: “Annie, can you forgive me? We were going to ride it til the end…” You can feel the physical weight of the song’s lyrics in the production — a result of Long’s edict that there would be only physical instruments on Grizzly Peak. “I started to appreciate again the physicality of the things being hit, actual vibrations of strings, drumheads. No matter how hard you hit a synth it won't give that impact, and impact is one of those things that's really tied to the sound of this band,” he says. “One of my early production principles for this record was that everything had to be played on a real instrument. I picked up a baby grand piano and put it in my living room which is way too small for it — I can't believe my family let me do that.”

Complex, heart-on-sleeve reckoning — with selfhood as well as relationships with others — recurs throughout Grizzly Peak. “Stop running away while standing still/You’re looking away from what’s been here,” Long sings on the spare, almost funky “Sunrise/Sunset”; “I need to know that you want what you have,” he levels on “Quiet Voices.” These songs are emotionally generous but resolute in their aim to pull apart even the most tightly-coiled of emotions. Long says no stone was left unturned in his quest to make Grizzly Peak sound like the inside of a guitar, and the same feels true of the record’s emotional content; this is The Dodos laid bare, with nothing to hide.

Befitting a record that hits so close to The Dodos’ career-long goal, Grizzly Peak also serves as a love letter to the fans who have devoted their hearts to Long and Kroeber’s music. “I feel a huge debt of gratitude to our fans or anyone that paid attention enough to notice,” Long says. “I really want to say thank you; going back to our original intention and trying to perfect this sound really seemed like the best way to express that gratitude. It was a huge motivation in working through this stuff.” In its content, too, Grizzly Peak seems to speak to the lifeline music can give someone. “Sustainer,” a highlight of the record, puts it plainly: “The song will be my sustainer.” This is an album intensely in love with music as a life force, as a raison d'etre for so many of us in the world. “I never had much to say, but I said it with a guitar,” Long sings on “With A Guitar.” Years later, we’re still listening.

credits

released November 12, 2021

Written and Produced by Meric Long

Mixed by Beau Sorenson

Recorded at Bartons Den and Tiny Telephone Oakland

Final mixing at New, Improved Recording

Mastered by Sarah Register

All instruments played and sung by The Dodos except for...

Cello and Violin on tracks 1, 2, 3, 5 performed by Lewis and Graham Patzner

Cover Art by Michelle McNeil

Layout/Design by Ishaq Fahim

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about

The Dodos San Francisco, California

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discography

Grizzly Peak

Nov 2021
The Atlantic

Oct 2019
The Surface

Mar 2019
Certainty Waves

Oct 2018
Individ

Jan 2015
Carrier

Aug 2013

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