page_title: Shields (album)
section_title: Recording
hierarchical_section_title: Shields (album) / Recording
caption_attribution_description: English: In easternmost Massachusetts, Cape Cod juts dramatically out into the Atlantic Ocean. The 65-mile peninsula has Cape Cod Bay to its north, the Nantucket Sound to its south and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. It is the world’s largest glacially formed peninsula; a remnant landscape left by the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet. The outer shore of the cape, from Long Point to south of Pleasant Bay, was designated as the Cape Cod National Seashore in August of 1961. The National Seashore encompasses over 44,000 acres of land, which includes marine, estuarine, and freshwater ecosystems. This Landsat 7 image was acquired on June 22, 2002. The pseudo-natural colour image, is a composite of ETM+ bands 7, 5, and 3. Cape Cod is found on Landsat WRS-2 Path 11 Row 31.
context_page_description: Shields is the fourth studio album by American indie rock band Grizzly Bear, released on September 18, 2012 by Warp Records. Written and recorded following a six-month hiatus from band activities, the album was produced by bassist and multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor. Preceded by the singles, "Sleeping Ute" and "Yet Again", an expanded version of Shields, entitled Shields Expanded, was released on November 12, 2013, featuring additional tracks recorded during the sessions, demo recordings and remixes. The eight additional tracks were issued as a separate mini-album, entitled Shields: B-Sides.
  Shields has been described as the band's most collaborative album, with vocalist and guitarist Daniel Rossen noting, "[The band's aim was to] write and make music that is as collaborative as possible, so that we have a product that we all feel a sense of authorship over as a collective."
  The album received acclaim upon release. Shields reached number seven on the Billboard 200 and number seventeen on the UK Albums Chart.
context_section_description: Regarding the band's eventual return, Ed Droste noted, "Coming back together to try to write and record was like being in junior high again – after you go away for the summer, the first couple of weeks are slightly awkward when you get back to school. Then, you get back into the swing." Daniel Rossen elaborated, "The whole process with this record felt like starting over. We took enough time off that we... I don't know. My head kind of went out of the game or something. Getting back into it was really confusing. It took a long time."
    
  In June 2011, the band moved to Marfa, Texas to begin recording their fourth studio album, with bassist and multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor returning to his role as producer. Droste noted, "We had passed through before and there is a great arts collective and vibe. We decided to rent a place and make our next album there." The band recorded "an album's worth of material" in Marfa, but ultimately abandoned the majority of tracks. Vocalist Ed Droste noted, "We were like, 'We're ready to do this!' Then, we got there and recorded twelve songs and were like, 'This isn't quite there.'" Vocalist and guitarist Daniel Rossen elaborated, "We didn't have that unspoken momentum, that unspoken understanding of what everyone is into." Only two songs from these sessions made it onto the finished album; "Sleeping Ute" and "Yet Again".
  The band subsequently started afresh in early 2012, returning to Droste's mother's home in Cape Cod, where the band had previously recorded its second studio album, Yellow House (2006). Commenting on the return to Yellow House, Droste noted, "It's so funny that we went back there in the end. It's my grandmother's house, we know it, and we can use it for free. And as soon as we got there, things started happening. [...] We just sat by the fire, Dan strumming, me singing, and it happened. Some of the best songs on the record, like "Speak in Rounds" and "Half Gate", came out of that. We stayed there in isolation for two months straight." Droste stated that he and Rossen decided to "'try writing from the bottom up. We've never done it before.' There's a little bit of fear there because it's a new process we've never tried. We've never sat side by side and said, 'Let's literally, out of the ether, start writing songs together.' A couple of songs came that way, and that's why they're verse me, chorus Dan. [...] Suddenly the synergy hit, and the momentum struck, and then everyone got excited. And that's when the ball started to roll, and then we just started playing around, and people were much more open.""
  Ed Droste described Shields' overall aesthetic as "very in-your-face", saying that "the drums and vocals are clearer and louder. It's not as dreamy and pastoral and sleepy as past efforts, and there's a lot of raw vocal takes, which is something we don't normally do." Rossen elaborated, "Previous records were definitely dreamier with lots of layered vocals and we've started paring those back and taking them away, taking them away. That's what we went for on this record: clearer performances and more direct arrangements."
  Talking about Chris Taylor's production, Rossen stated, "Part of his strength is that he pushes us. [...] He enables us to try stranger stuff; he pushes us to that side of ourselves. [...] He's always thinking of the whole palette, I feel, whereas Ed and I might be more worried about a melody or a lyric." The album was mixed by Michael Brauer.
caption: Cape Cod and Cape Cod Bay, where the band recorded the majority of the album's material.[9]
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2006:06:29 17:02:49", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5354", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2418", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2145"}