« MTV Europe Music Awards: Kanye West wins 'Biggest Baby Award ' | Main | Pitchfork's Album of the Year? | Poll »
November 03, 2006
Deerhunter
I've been putting off writing about Atlanta's Deerhunter for over a week, because their sound is really elusive when you try to put a pin in it. They've been touring around Europe with ex-Brooklynites Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but they don't sound a lick like either of those bands. A recent Pitchfork blurb identified their prime predecessor as the Jesus and Mary Chain, but there's not so much push and pull between sweet pop and brutal noise, more like the pop swallowed the noise and you can still hear it somewhere in the pop's belly. My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth are fair touchstones as well, but the music is not so much reminiscent of those groups as it is working in their tradition of odd and smartly disorienting rock music.
So, awesome, right?
For now, let's just call them cut up and stitched together hallucinations with the same je ne sais quoi that made us fall so hard for A Sunny Day in Glasgow earlier this year. Maybe by the time their second album Cryptograms comes out on Kranky Records in late January, we'll have it better articulated, but I kind of hope not.
Deerhunter - "Heatherwood"
Weird, because while this song is awash in fuzz in a way that fits nicely into the shoegaze aesthetic, the static has almost nothing to do with the guitar sound, which is crystal clear. Like they brought out a white noise generator just to blur the edges. It's the best of both worlds really, as the obscuring noise makes the song seem more mysterious, but without sacrificing the sharpness of a sweet, sleepwalking guitar hook. The somnambulant strings are shuffled around by rickety clockwork percussion that gives the song a deceptively up-tempo push, and are a nice counterpoint to Bradford Cox's high, girlish vocals. He's seems to be singing about death and rebirth, and sounds disturbingly optimistic. Like a man who knows some things that we don't. How to concoct such a glorious jumble, for one.
Deerhunter - "Spring Hall Convert"
This one starts out in a much more stark and deliberate place than "Heatherwood", with a lush open throated vocal that recalls Grizzly Bear's blog hit "the Knife". Soon chugging rhythm breaks up the pastoral calm, and aggressive guitars give a horse tail swipe to the clear vocal's uniform sound, splintering the voice and sending it fluttering around unglued. Bradford's dragged 'S' sounds have an oddly abrasive effect here, spiking into the red when other letters don't. Like a Dune character who's lisp is a killing word. I would have been smitten by this one even if didn't throw in a big helping of submerged "Ba da da dah"s towards the end, but for wayward Slanted and Enchanted lifers like me that's always gonna be a plus.
Deerhunter - "Adorno"
While Cryptograms is clearly the album in which the kids make the leap in terms of a consistency, there are some gems scattered among the rubble of their 2005 self-titled debut. This track features a more propulsive, adrenal rhythm section and agression where the atmosphere will some day be. More conventional sounding, but more easy to classify as "rockin'". The band's disjointed charm can be seen in embryonic form as well, with vocals overlapping and interrupting themselves, but never getting in the way of the runaway bassline.
Bonus Video:
Deerhunter - "Strange Lights"
Swirly.
// Deerhunter - band site
// Deerhunter - MySpace
// Deerhunter - Deerhunter Buy
Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 3, 2006 04:22 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.merryswankster.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/530
Comments
David Lynch would approve.
Go to: http://www.davidlynch.com/ringtones.html
and click on "KILL DEER"
Now scare your friends.
Posted by: Sebastian at November 3, 2006 04:31 PM
