Perfect 10s: Grizzly Bear - "Half Gate" (2012)

For the inaugural installment of a new series highlighting some of my very favorite songs, we're revisiting a hidden gem from one of the most impressive discographies in modern indie music.

Grizzly Bear is a difficult band to pin down. The genre-bending, Brooklyn-based quartet has never made music for the impatient, with their intricate arrangements and verbose lyrics often demanding multiple listens before fully clicking. However, once all the pieces do start falling into place, you’ll discover some of the most powerful, thrilling, and downright gorgeous music you’ll ever hear. And in my humble opinion, there’s no better showcase of Grizzly Bear’s talents than “Half Gate,” an oft-overlooked deep cut from the band’s 2012 album Shields that just might be one of the finest blends of indie folk and art rock ever conceived.

Shields came about at a strange moment in time for Grizzly Bear. After the unforeseen success of their 2009 album Veckatimest and breakout single “Two Weeks” (itself a Perfect 10 in its own right), the band was facing a whole new kind of pressure. Touring the record was a massive undertaking as the success of “Two Weeks” earned the band a string of gigs opening for legendary acts like Radiohead and Paul Simon, exposing even more audiences to the band’s work. This overwhelming experience led to a brief, unofficial hiatus for Grizzly Bear, with each member pursuing their own solo projects for the next year. When the band eventually regrouped to begin work on their next album, they discovered that the time apart had left everyone on different pages creatively, and an entire album’s worth of songs were scrapped. While a couple of tracks from these sessions were salvaged and ultimately found a home on Shields, most of the album’s material was written during a two month-long artistic retreat where the band lived in near complete isolation in search of a new, more collaborative direction. “Half Gate” was one of the final songs penned during this isolation, and it is very much a product of the circumstances it was birthed from.

Simply put, “Half Gate” is a song about burnout. Co-frontman Daniel Rossen, who splits lead vocal duties with Ed Droste, describes the song as evoking the experience of “living in a kind of limbo state at the crux of a major shift…after exhausting all the resources of a previous life.” In the case of the band members themselves, that limbo state was the need to rediscover their identity as a creative unit, and the metaphorical exhaustion of resources is conveyed strikingly through lyrics portraying actual, physical depletion:

At the end of the line

It's as if there's no time at all

Nothing left to win

Every pleasure burned to the wick

Past the roaring shore

I have nothing left to hear

What makes the song so poignant, however, is how it re-contextualizes those same emotions within the universal experience of a breakup. The first verse paints a heartbreaking portrait of denial, highlighting the false sense of comfort that comes with ignoring change and how easy it can be to fall into such ignorance, even against both parties’ best interests:

But honestly it's fine

And when I mention how I love you

It's all I do

Even as I stray

Denial turns to acceptance in the chorus, declaring the need to let go of an outdated or unrealistic expectation of one’s identity, whether it be that of a partner or that of oneself:

Which of your selves is truly gone

And checked out, so long

Unhinged, unwound

Come help me on

To let lie what's done

This process is mournful, but as is the case in most experiences of loss, there’s also plenty of opportunity for genuine celebration. The last lines of the chorus acknowledge this, finding beauty in the fact that even if those past iterations of self no longer exist in the present, the memories of those iterations will always remain:

In some great beyond

You're still there still as you were

This, it seems, is what the song posits to be the necessary last step in climbing out of a state of limbo and into the next major chapter of life. It’s an invitation for inner peace after a surge of vulnerability.

Musically, “Half Gate” is a perfect culmination of everything that makes Grizzly Bear special. Across its five and a half minute runtime, the track effortlessly balances moments of delicate restraint with ones of controlled, sweeping chaos. In the verses, bright, twinkling guitars are played against a backdrop of steady piano chords and the somber marching rhythms of drummer Christopher Bear—a man who, believe it or not, had nothing to do with the naming of the band (Ed Droste had been releasing solo material under the Grizzly Bear moniker for years before he and Chris had even met). Bear’s drumming is the glue that holds all of the band’s music together: endlessly creative without being particularly flashy, injecting each song with plenty of character without distracting from the other performances. In this case, it’s Droste’s vocals that are given the space to truly shine, with the tenderness of his delivery cutting through the mix like a knife. Occasional swells of layered vocal harmonies—not unlike the ones on “Two Weeks” that made the band a household name—give the track a steady momentum, building tension on each repetition.

When the chorus hits, though, all of that tension is released in a grand, cathartic crescendo, a massive wave of instrumentation that sounds like the musical embodiment of the “roaring shore” referenced in the song’s opening lines. Pulsating cellos and horns, reverb-soaked guitars, and swirling snare drum patterns combine to form a beautiful cacophony. The warmth of Droste’s voice is swapped out in favor of the huskier tones of Rossen’s, perfectly matching the intensity of the music and the urgency of the lyrics. And when the bellowing, overdriven guitars come crashing in for the extended final chorus, it feels like a real moment of closure for both the listener and the band. It’s hypnotic, thunderous, and enchanting all at once, and it’s nothing short of a Perfect 10.

Listen to “Half Gate” here: