Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear spent last summer drawing inspiration and recording songs for the follow-up to 2006’s critical smash, Yellow House, at a number of New England locales. One of them, a miniscule island off the coast of Massachusetts called Veckatimest, became the title of the band’s new album. While richly innovative art can seem cryptic, even unapproachable, the twelve chamber pop songs that emerged from these bucolic sessions are absolutely sentient and stirring thanks to an airtight instrumentation of sparkling keyboards, strummed electric guitars, swirling string arrangements and the occasional oboe or autoharp — to say nothing of Ed Droste’s piercingly pretty falsetto and the omnipresent crooning harmonies as sunny as any you’ll hear on Pet Sounds. Veckatimest plays like an ocean of rolling waves, alternately swelling into action with the joyous pop choruses of “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait for the Others,” then paring it down on wistful tracks like “All We Ask” and “Ready, Able.” The album ends with a searing piano stunner, “Foreground,” topping off what might prove to be this year’s most spectacularly beautiful record. With the Morning Benders. E. THOMPSON

Fri., Oct. 16, 8 p.m., 2009