''Painted Ruins'' is the fifth studio album by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

band

Grizzly Bear The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America. In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos hor ...

, released on August 18, 2017, by

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also ...

. Along with the announcement of the album, the band announced a fall European and North American tour.

Recording

Grizzly Bear spent two years writing and recording for the album. Band member Chris Taylor produced ''Painted Ruins'', with recording sessions occurring primarily at Allaire Studios in New York, but also at various locations around Los Angeles, including Taylor's own Terrible Studios.

Release

Prior to the release of the first single from the album, the band uploaded a series of mysterious teaser videos to their YouTube account. On May 4, 2017, the first single from the album, "Three Rings", was released. The song was officially released at midnight in each successive time zone across the globe, and was later uploaded to their YouTube channel. On May 17, Grizzly Bear revealed the name and release date of the upcoming album, and also announced their first tour in four years, beginning in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

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on October 5, and continuing through the end of the year, with concerts in Europe and North America. Later that same day, Grizzly Bear released the second single from the album, "Mourning Sound". On June 23, the band released the third track from the record, "Four Cypresses". On July 21, the band released the fourth single from the record, "Neighbors".

Critical reception

''Painted Ruins'' has received acclaim from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on ...

. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 82 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim" based on 29 reviews. Laura Snapes in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...

'' described the album as "Unbeholden to the band’s existence, ''Painted Ruins'' has a cavalier quality that you’d struggle to spot in its tense forebears".

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

Credits: *

Christopher Bear Christopher Bear (born July 19, 1982) is a drummer and multi-instrumentalist member of the Brooklyn-based indie-rock group Grizzly Bear. Bear joined the group with singer Ed Droste for contributions on their first record, '' Horn of Plenty''. ...

– drums, percussion, synths, vocals, drum programming, wurlitzer, pedal steel * Edward Droste – vocals *

Daniel Rossen Daniel Raphael Rossen (born August 5, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known as the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the indie rock band Grizzly Bear, with whom he has recorded four studio albums. Ross ...

– vocals, guitars, piano, synths, organ, cello * Chris Taylor – vocals, bass, saxophones, clarinet, flute, bass harmonica, synths, drum programming

Charts

References

{{Authority control 2017 albums Grizzly Bear (band) albums RCA Records albums Albums produced by Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear musician)