Department Of Eagles :: “In Ear Park” - 4AD
Whitey on the Moon UK, more commonly known as Department Of Eagles, a name inspired by artist Marcel Broodthaers' “Institutional Critique,” consists of members Fred Nicolaus and future Grizzly Bear member Daniel Rossen, who first met when they prophetically connected and became roommates their freshmen year at NYC two and a half decades ago. Exploring various textures, sonic samples, liberating layers, and electronic expression, the duo quickly began working together while balancing school life and the responsibilities of their studies, though the desire to keep the band’s identity intimate and its songs secretive was ideal, their little world slowly began to expand, and softly shift into this evasive, echoing chamber of melody and molecular mystery. With the release of their 2003 debut “The Whitey on the Moon UK LP/The Cold Nose,” which consisted of recordings from 2001-2003 before signing with the mighty 4AD for the band’s monumental classic, 2008’s “In Ear Park,” Department Of Eagles captured something incredibly robust and captivatingly classic during the epic essence in the early to mid-2000s that, to this day, still resonates with listers both new and old. While Rossen was writing more folk-influenced material before he officially joined Grizzly Bear during this time, the duo kept in touch over the next few years, continuing to explore and invest in the project before reuniting in the Big Apple, where it all started in 2007 with their old friend, bandmate, neighbor, and producer/engineer Chris Taylor to write and record perhaps their most compellingly complex and artistically atmospheric work to date, “In Ear Park.”
“We actually didn’t record it in a traditional studio, we recorded in a church in Brooklyn that Grizzly Bear uses for a space, and there’s a huge amount of natural reverb. Most people when they get reverb in a studio, it’s through a pedal but in this case, we couldn’t actually get it out of the recording, just because you’re basically recording drums in a cavern. So I think the church played a huge part. There’s just sounds of us kind of running around. Like one of the tracks has Chris Bear running up and down the stairs of the church with leather shoes on, and one of the tracks has the organ turning on and off. It’s definitely part of the record in an interesting way.”
Inspired by Rossen’s memories as a child with his late father, who had passed just a year before the release of the album, it was completed over several years with the implications of esoteric methods and uncommon strategies for recording; the band finally laid everything out on the table after years of emailing demos and takes back and forth, something they did since first meeting each other, signed with the legendary label 4AD and released the album in early October 2008 in all of its iconic entirety. Led by one of the album’s earliest tracks, "Balmy Night,” which the duo would often reflect on during the project’s sometimes brutal delay to understand that what they were doing would ultimately be worth it in the end, “In Ear Park” is fundamentally fragile and atmospherically alluring as it transcends across lonely landscapes and into the soothing vapors of a cool, calm night. While a lot of the album consists of material that didn’t quite fit the Grizzly Bear sound at the time, more specifically their groundbreaking 2009 release of “Veckatimest," Department Of Eagles adopted the anatomy and core of the music by meditating on its melody and mythical memory. With tracks like "Classical Records," “Therapy Car Noise," the album’s acclaimed single "No One Does It Like You," and the opening track all spiraling into this sonic vessel that equally explodes into the past, present, and future of cosmic comradery, Department Of Eagles defined a generation by bridging the galactical gap between pre-internet insomnia and the dawn of indie music hysteria.
