Department Of Eagles – Archive 2003-2006

For fans that are already growing impatient for a follow-up to Grizzly Bear’s much lauded (and TLOBF’s best record of 2009) Veckatimest, this new collection from Department Of Eagles (Daniel Rossen’s first band), Archive 2003-2006, will surely tide fans over for the time being, while also giving them insight into Rossen’s evolving songwriting process that has gracefully colored Grizzly Bear’s output since Yellow House. While never approaching the finely tuned orchestral flourishes of Grizzly Bear, the songs (or skeletal sketches of songs) represented on this retrospective reveals the early experimentation and beauty found within the music that Rossen and his NYU roommate Fred Nicolaus originally intended to be the follow-up to their 2003 debut record, The Cold Nose. They eventually scrapped these sessions, and started working on the songs that what would eventually become the stunning In Ear Park. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of gloriously sublime moments to be found on Archive, as Rossen’s intricate harmonies are present throughout, as well as the instantly recognizable buoyant melodies and delicate guitar work that propel these diaphanous numbers and would ultimately shape the music that Rossen and Nicolaus would make in the future.

The album begins with ‘Practice Room Sketch 1′, the first of 5 fragmentary pieces that appear on this collection, which Rossen and Nicolaus recorded in NYU’s rehearsal rooms. All the ‘Practice Room’ pieces are short, incomplete numbers that show potential for growth, but alas are forever stuck in the developmental phase. As such, they end up forming dreamy segues into the more polished tracks on Archive more than anything else, except for ‘Practice Room Sketch 2′, which finds Rossen repeating the desperate entreaty “When is it going to get easier?” over minimal guitars and jagged percussion. It’s a poignant moment both on the album and in their career, for little did the duo know at the time that it was going to get easier soon enough, with the subsequent positive response to In Ear Park and Rossen’s eventual ascension into the indie-rock stratosphere a mere few years away.

The more accomplished, fully-realized songs found on Archive clearly hold the most appeal, with echoes of the musical elements that make the future recordings by these two so engaging and memorable. ‘Deadly Disclosure’ has a haunting, elegiac tone to it reminiscent of the spare acoustic numbers found on Yellow House, and ‘While We’re Young’ could easily be heard as direct precursor to ‘Teenagers,’ as well as the hypnotic vocal harmonies that have been so prevalent in Grizzly Bear’s recent output. ‘Grand Army Plaza’ and ‘Brightest Minds’ also echo Grizzly Bear’s tendency to gradually build on a persistent tempo, as the song swells and grows moodier and more affecting. These songs are really quite good in their own right, and make you wonder why Rossen and Nicolaus discarded them. But the last two “complete” songs on Archive, ‘Flip’ and ‘Golden Apple,’ are plodding numbers that clearly lack a spark, and it becomes a bit more obvious as to why they abandoned them in favor of starting over.

None of these songs are outright stunners, but they’re compelling simply because of the glimpse they provide into the primitive songwriting methods of two musicians who were both on the cusp of breaking through to prominence. There are familiar snippets layered within these songs that the pair would eventually expand upon and develop on their more successful material, and these skeletal pieces are fine examples of what can happen when artists have the opportunity to spend more time evolving their ideas. But the talent, inventiveness, and musical dexterity are all present on these songs, and even though there was no way for these musicians to know it, within a few short years everyone in the music cognoscenti would know Rossen and Nicolaus’ names. So much so, that these songs they once discarded in favor of starting over would be clamored for by fans that can’t get seem to get enough of their work.