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November 29, 2007
Atlas Sound - "Cobwebs"
It very rare that my interpretations of the songs I post goes beyond my own (hopefully) insightful speculations and a bit of skill as a Google ninja. I may get it right by accident or I might be wildly off-base, and really there's no way for me to know for sure. But today, I stand before you as a man with actual first-hand knowledge of what he speaks! Do not get used to it, for it will not last long.
On Tuesday, I talked to Deerhunter/Atlas Sound man Bradford Cox for about an hour at a travel writer's apartment in the East Village (yeah, I'm not sure why it was there either). The full interview, plus a video document of said conversation, will eventually show up on Prefix closer to the February release of the Atlas Sound's debut record, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See, But Cannot Feel. We covered alot of ground, pretty much all relating to the way Bradford works and why specific musical obsessions continue to follow him from his solo Atlas Sound songs to his more (in)famous band Deerhunter and back again. One of the things that most interested me, as a forward thinking denizen of our new media landscape, was the form and function of the Deerhunter blog. Though it gained notoriety in sort of a sensationalist tabloid manner, the site has been much more fascinating for its refusal to treat new, unreleased music as a commodity to be cunningly doled out to high impact traffic depots.
Take for example, "Cobwebs," posted by Bradford maybe five minutes before I walked into the room. The song was recorded on Monday in a Greenpoint, Brooklyn church balcony that also serves as the practice space for the critically adored band Grizzly Bear, by their member/producer Chris Taylor. If ever a breathless Pitchfork or Stereogum lead paragraph was made ready to order, it's that one. But instead of sending it on through a PR agent, and milking the song for another few minutes of name saturation and press awareness for the forthcoming album, it goes up on the DH blog with little fanfare and nary a related e-mail blast. The singer explained that the whole purpose of the site was to capture ephemeral moments of music that aren't predestined or even well remembered after the fact. If this gives quality music the appearance of being slightly disposable, then so be it. That's sort of the point, even.
But the song itself is hardly forgettable. Despite his general reluctance to attach exalted worth to a momentary snapshot, Bradford couldn't help but be excited by the end result. He claims that he doesn't write lyrics ahead of time when conjuring songs for Atlas Sound; that the resulting words and even the chord changes of the mainly spontaneous music is a surprise in retrospect, even to him. "Cobwebs" ' lyrics seem to bear that out, as references to spiderwebs and peeling paint make it seem that he was staring at the old church's ceiling while strumming his guitar. But damned if the whole thing isn't unbearably lovely, blanketing sixties' melodic bliss with downy white noise. It almost makes you wish that he would value the songs more as pieces to be honed, rather than raw extemporaneous snapshots. Because if this was completely off the cuff, then what would it sound like after a few days of polish?
Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 29, 2007 10:15 AM
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