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Feb 13, 2015 By Mike Hilleary Grizzly Bear

For those that don’t know Genius is a website that allows users to provide annotations and interpretations to various forms of text. Originally targeted towards rap lyrics, the site has since expanded to include poetry, literature, new stories, and other genres of music. Providing a bit of insight into their work Grizzly Bear‘s Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen have provided annotations to various portions of their song catalog, including “Two Weeks”, “Knife”, and “Sleeping Ute.”

You can read Droste’s annotations here and Rossen’s here, as well as few excerpts below.

Droste on “Two Weeks”:

“TAKE YOUR TIME”

“Take your time” is not sarcastic - it’s serious. Slow down, take your time. It is about reassuring someone that you are with, telling them that you are going to be there even though you are both bored of it. Would you just sometimes take your time, would you make it easy, can you just not stress?

“ROUTINE MALAISE”

I think we all relate to the concept of routine malaise. Everyone experiences it at some point. This song makes people say things like “I want to get married to that!” or “It’s so romantic!” but it’s actually about the disintegration of a relationship.

Droste on “Knife”:

“I WANT YOU TO KNOW, WHEN I LOOK IN YOUR EYES”

It is me being the asshole. I am talking about lying straight to your face, looking in your eyes, lying, cheating, and then stabbing you in the back. People say, ‘It’s such a romantic song.’ It’s not, really, but I welcome that interpretation.

Rossen on “While You Wait for the Others”:

Here, I am playing a character for the fun of it, an exaggerated version of myself at my most ornery. The first lines came about spontaneously and there wasn’t much intention really other than to write lines that fit the character.

(www.grizzly-bear.net)