Grizzly Bear’s “Veckatimest” was our Album of the Year in 2009, and their live performance that year at the Wiltern in LA was a revelatory mauling.   While we await their next album (no word yet), one of the band’s leaders, Daniel Rossen, has released a gripping set of songs on his debut solo release, Silent Hour / Golden Mile.  The prolific Rossen has written some of the best compositions of the last several years as part of Grizzly Bear and Department of Eagles, and the new EP is more of the same.  Rossen has said these songs have a unified theme of “unease with the world around you, about indeterminacy in your own life, and the ability somehow to navigate both.”  All is not gloom and doom as Rossen sings on the closing track, Golden Mile:  “For a silent hour, for a golden mile, there’s bliss in this mess. There’s madness all around.”

Listen to Saint Nothing followed by Silent Song below, and then buy the EP HERE.  You can stream it at Spinner HERE.