You know it’s high time for a little R&R when the prospect of a 20-hour plane flight becomes appealing.

After five months of strenuous touring across half the globe, it’s no wonder Brooklyn-based indie rockers Grizzly Bear are excited to be heading to Australian shores for the final leg of their ‘Shields’ world tour.

“I think my next chill time is going to be on the plane. I’m looking forward to it. Spending 20 hours on the way to Australia – it’s going to be great!”

Between performances on the set of a late-night Parisian TV show, Grizzly Bear vocalist and guitarist Daniel Rossen speaks with softened enthusiasm, clearly drawing on the last vestiges of energy for the night.

“We’re very excited to get to Australia. It’s always more fun there because it’s a mellower atmosphere and everywhere you go is beautiful, we love it. I’m also kind of a nature junkie so that part of the world is pretty incredible for that, it’s amazing. Plus, it’s just so relaxed and the crowd is always really enthusiastic. Truly, it feels the most like LA or New York than anywhere else we’ve been. It feels the most like home, it’s nice. So it’s a really great way to end this whole crazy, merry-go-round of three months of shows we’re on right now.”
Throughout what seems more like a rollercoaster of a tour, the humble lads have remained focused, positive and spirited – at least, for now.

“We started at the end of August and did England, then came back to the States and Canada, then went back and did Europe. It was crazy, but cool. On this particular tour we chose to do everything right in a row, so it’s kind of like a marathon of shows for us. The aim of the game right now is just to stay healthy and Zen, look forward, not worry too much and keep on going.”

Clearly self-conscious of his wearied tone, he adds hastily, “I mean, the shows are always fun – that’s the point, right?  If the show isn’t fun then there’s no point in any of it and that part remains great. I mean, it’s all great, it’s just... a lot.”

Grizzly Bear are no strangers to the touring grind. In the aftershock of their ‘09 chart-rocketing album ‘Veckatimest’, the band embarked on what quickly revealed itself to be an overwhelmingly draining and ultimately disillusioning world tour.

“I guess it depends on your temperament, but I think for me, going so deep into the world of touring as we did, the amount of repetition can get very insular. You feel very cut off from anything that’s really going on in the world and at a certain point it feels like you’re not really growing as a human being. I think that was a wall that I’d hit. I sort of thought, ‘There’s got to be something else’. And, you know what? I haven’t really found that yet. But we all needed a kind of a break.

“[Touring] wasn’t satisfying. It wasn’t inspiring. I guess we don’t have the highest threshold for touring but, for us, it was a lot. We needed to go back to life and be regular people for a while, then come back to music and have a fresh perspective; be excited again about what it means to us.”

Ironically, it was this period of separation and self-exploration which heralded what Daniel describes as the band’s most cohesive and inclusive album to date.

“[‘Shields’] was a collaborative record; we all wrote together as much as we could, doing our best to keep it as open as possible. Everyone has their own voice in every song but we bring it together and involve the whole band. We’re all controlling in our own way. We’re all neurotic in a sense, detail-oriented, but I’m definitely pleased with what we ended up coming out with after all that time of working on it ... obsessing about it ... It all culminated in this record which I think came at the right time. It took us a really long time to do it, but it happened in the right way. It took as long as it needed to take, and that’s just kinda how we are – we’re a slow-moving band. We always have to feel like we have a reason to be doing what we’re doing; it’s just finding that reason took a long time.”

Even upon reuniting, ideas did not start flowing instantaneously and those which did eventuate rarely gelled during this “slightly awkward” initial phase.

“That period was a little bit confusing. We got some great music out of it eventually, but it really didn’t start moving in a way that felt real, like we had momentum, until about six or eight months after we started even talking about making a record. Then things started moving along and the songs just started kinda happening.”

Constant communication was nevertheless integral in shaping the unique new sound of the resulting album, in which boundaries are pushed and new territory is explored.

“I think we challenged each other more, rather than just being comfortable with whatever we were doing. We were able to really acknowledge each other’s strengths and weakness and if someone didn’t like an idea they could just say it, like, ‘Let’s not do this, this sounds too much like something we used to do’. So then we’d start over and try something different. There was a lot of pushing and shoving to do something new and I think that’s a lot of what made the record really work; when we just pushed each other into doing something different.”

It seems honesty was indeed the best policy to employ throughout the making of the highly anticipated and unanimously praised ‘Shields’. “There’s an openness to this record that I feel like we were always looking for. There’s a feeling that anything could happen at any point in the song; you don’t necessarily know what’s coming. I think that’s a quality we always wanted, that it feels like a sort of musical journey to get through the whole record. That’s where we’re at now and that’s the kind of feeling we want to continue to create; like it’s a musical landscape – you don’t know what’s coming.”

Grizzly Bear play Harvest Festival, at City Botanic Gardens and Riverstage Sunday November 18. ‘Shields’ is out now.