Daniel Rossen @ Variety Playhouse – Atlanta, GA 04-01-22

Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen finally announced his long awaited solo debut album earlier this year. With the new album, You Belong There, due out April 8th via Warp, Rossen has embarked on a 34 date solo tour stopping at Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse on Friday night.

Daniel Rossen is a multi-talented artist, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter best known as guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the illustrious indie rock band Grizzly Bear and also founding member of Department of Eagles. Since getting his start in the early 2000s, Rossen has become known as one of the most unique vocalists of the indie rock era. A deep, immediately recognizable voice, Rossen has given snippets of his solo work over the years – releasing a solo EP, Silent Hour/Golden Mile, in 2012, and the 12″ single Deerslayer for Record Store Day 2018. Since 2019, Rossen has been teasing the release of a solo debut, building up to the January release of “Shadow in the Frame” the first single off the upcoming new album.

Supporting the new record, Daniel Rossen has gone out on tour all by himself, just a few guitars, piano, and his songs. In Atlanta, Variety Playhouse was setup with chairs down in the pit where dancing normally occurs, the theatre seating was intact with additional seats added on each level of both sides of the stage. This was a sit down, solo show – Variety Playhouse was transformed into a listening room, you know, one of those small rooms that a pin dropping disturbs the attentive audience set on not talking, but instead hanging on every lyric and note. Of course for Rossen, this was a little different.

While Grizzly Bear might not be one of those crazy high energy, dancing type of indie rocks bands, they are a FULL band who plays LOUD sets to large audiences when they play live. Commenting to the quite Atlanta crowd between songs, Rossen ensured the audience it’s okay to make noise and talk, saying he wasn’t used to how quite it was. His second show of the tour the night before in New Orleans at the Toulouse Theatre evidently had more of a bar type feel than a listening room, plus Rossen said he had an impromptu set after the show at hotel bar on the hotel’s piano, calling it was probably one of his favorite shows. Heck, live music still feels weird in general, it’s not like Rossen or the audience has done this a ton over the last two years. Of course to those in the audience, this was all sort of perfect – a listening room was what was needed to hear every crevice of each song, while getting to know Daniel Rossen a little more between songs.

Playing a beautiful 60 minute set, we got the preview of the new album along with the already released new singles “Shadow in the Frame” and “Unpeople Space”, and songs off the 2012 EP including “Golden Mile”. Before finally closing down the set, Rossen asked the crowd if there was any requests. Of course there were shouts for multiple Grizzly Bear songs that Rossen laughed at, stating “how am I going to do that solo” before he finally gave up on the crowd requests and decided “Deep Blue Sea”, a solo song from Grizzly Bear’s 2007 Friend EP. While laughing at his own selection after commenting earlier about how quite the audience was, Rossen explained that “Deep Blue Sea” is a song he sings his daughter, and it always puts her to sleep. So yeah, Daniel Rossen was probably going to cry while singing this song, giggling at the irony.

For the Variety Playhouse audience though, it was a perfect ending to a gorgeous live set from an artist they don’t get to experience like this very often. Daniel Rossen solo – just one instrument, vocals, and songwriting, nothing more was needed for a set to remember. And then we lined up after at the merch booth to buy the vinyl a week early, before the official release on April 8th on all platforms of You Belong There, Daniel Rossen’s official solo debut album.

Check out photos below from the Daniel Rossen show at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, GA on Friday, April 1st, all photos by Mike Gerry: