Grizzly Bear On World Cafe

Enlarge this image toggle caption Tom Hines/Courtesy of the artist Tom Hines/Courtesy of the artist

Deadlines and pressure can sometimes be the enemy of art. Take them away, and you're left with wide open space for creativity. That was the key for today's guest, Grizzly Bear, in making the band's new album called Painted Ruins.

Grizzly Bear's previous record, Shields, came out in 2012. They toured it for a year and a half, after which the band's four members were pretty fried. So, they took some space and left Brooklyn. Singer and guitarist Ed Droste, multi-instrumentalist/producer Chris Taylor and drummer Chris Bear all wound up in Los Angeles, while co-lead singer and guitarist Daniel Rossen splits his time between Santa Fe, N.M., and upstate New York.

Set List "Three Rings"

"Losing All Sense"

"Mourning Sound"

In the interim, there was marriage, divorce, new dad-dom... a lot of fodder for new music — however cryptic any references to those events might be. (These aren't literal guys.) They are funny, though, as you'll hear in my chat with Taylor and Rossen. We talked about how Taylor got the writing ball rolling again and what puns ensue when a band named Grizzly Bear comes back after five years off the album grid.

But first, hear the entire band performing the song "Three Rings" off their latest album, Painted Ruins, in the player above.