The notion of making your masterpiece while sequestered deep in the woods has been seducing artists since Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s, if not long before. Daniel Rossen, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter with lauded indie band Grizzly Bear, wasn’t immune to it. When he and his wife had tired of Brooklyn a decade ago, they moved upstate in New York, and he hoped to capture in his nascent solo music the “impactful, unforgettable” connection to the land that he experienced there. He released the lovely, haunted Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP in 2012. Then, nothing. The longer he stayed there, the more distanced from his work he became.
“I got sort of lost up there, in my own head, in an almost depressive rumination about my life,” says Rossen, 39, Zooming from his home – now in Santa Fe, New Mexico – in late March. “I ended up feeling like there was some connection between a longing for a sense of place and the way that ruminating, depressive mind states can chisel you into place.” He lost touch with his motivation to pursue music publicly, struggled with alcohol and dark winters, and battled self-criticism when he did try to write. He paraphrases something he read the late David Berman saying once: “‘As you get older, fighting the onslaught of terrible ideas becomes even more challenging’. I don’t know if that’s exactly true but sometimes I felt that way – it’s a lot more confusing to navigate what’s valid and what isn’t.”
