A Grizzly Bear featurette in the Village Voice
Since the first paragraph mentions a recording by Ed Droste's Great Aunt Marla, here is said song. Apparently, someone in the family got all roots and discovered a stack of these wax pressings she had made in the 1930s that fell on deaf ears and digitized them. I believe Ed told me that there is no documentation of what the original song titles were and whatever sheet music that accompanied them is long-lost now. This is a beguiling little tune though: secretarial, quirky, stressed.
The Bear's read of it devastates me, as does the string arrangement done by the Final Fantasy gent. It's one of my favorite moments of the year. The quotidian items listed here take on a more portent tone on Yellow House, to where they feel as if they are falling from the narrator's grasp, slipping away irretrievably. A despair acts as doppelganger in its stead, and under such a cloak of normalcy, edges closer, the singer that much closer to the edge of that which is unnameable.
"Unknown" by Marla
