Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood is not exactly a man known for saying much onstage, preferring to flop his fringe around as he wrings peculiar noises nobody quite understands from his instrument.
So handsome Brooklyn gents Grizzly Bear must have made something of an impression on Greenwood during their recent stint supporting Radiohead along the US and Canadian East Coast. At last Friday’s tour-closing concert in Toronto, Colin and Jonny Greenwood sported Grizzly Bear t-shirts and, just before Radiohead played ‘House Of Cards’, Jonny stepped forward and said something along the lines of "Thom wants me to thank my favorite band in the world, Grizzly Bear, so thanks a lot, thank you very much for touring with us." To which Thom exclaimed, excitedly, "Jonny speaks!" You can watch it over on YouTube.
The Quietus asked Grizzly Bear mainman Ed Droste how it had felt to be the band that broke Greenwood’s onstage silence. "Oh Lord, that’s a big statement and not entirely true, he speaks, just not a lot on stage," Droste told us. I was pretty shocked honestly. I was standing in the crowd with Leslie [Feist] and Owen [Pallett, known to you as Final Fantasy] and they turned to me and were like ‘did you FUCKING HEAR THAT?!?’ I will say I miss touring with them, it’s sort of like after that, can anything be better? I guess I should go live on a farm and raise some kids or something."
We took the opportunity to ask Droste how the follow-up to Grizzly Bear’s excellent Yellow House long-player was coming along. "I’d say we are half way done," he said. "I’m really really REALLY excited to be doing it and get it out there, seems like years ago we put out Yellow House, oh wait it was years ago. I think it’s going to be a nice progression forward but still very much us, in the meantime there is the epic and amazing Department of Eagles album coming out this fall to tide people over."
Watch Grizzly Bear play superb new track Two Weeks live on Letterman:
