Consisting of Bradford Cox, Moses Archuleta, Josh Fauver, Whitney Petty, and Lockett Pundt, Deerhunter hail from Atlanta and are back with the follow up to the beautiful Cryptograms in the from of Microcastles.
The Deerhunter sound, with it’s swirling ambience, isn’t a million miles away from Loveless era My Bloody Valentine. Bradford Cox (the main driving force behind Deerhunter) seems to share Kevin Shields’ love of experimenting with sound too. Last year he spoke to Pitchfork about the sound of the new album and commented “I know one song that I know is going to be on there is called “Twilight at Carbon Lake” and it’s kind of a doo-wop, 50s/early 60s, Everly Brothers, but through this kind of schizophrenic lens”. Although Cox was only describing one of the songs on the album it’s fair to say that this description could translate to more than just the final track to this album, with ‘Little Kids’ being a prime example.
After Cryptogams was releases Cox released an album under the name of Atlas Sound which saw him create an eschewed pop ambient album that would have Eno in tears and i think the departure from the Deerhunter name ultimately formed what would become Microcastles. Thats not to say that it’s just Let The Blind Lead… mark two, because it’s not. But it does seem like a mash up of Cryptograms and Let The Blind Lead… with a definite 60’s vibe.
Many would think that Cryptograms would be a hard record to follow but i disagree. For me Cryptograms was a mix of fucking great songs with fairly mediocre ones. But i think this time they’ve struck gold. I can imagine myself listening to this album straight through every night for the rest of my life. Especially when you hit the middle section with ‘Green Jacket’ and ‘Ativa’ slotting together to form a night time lullaby.
But fans of Cryptogram don’t despair! After the middle section we get treated to old Deerhunter via ‘Nothing Ever Happened’. The lyrics “I never saw it coming” seem extremely apt at this point!
If you want to be boring like me, you can split the album as follows.
- Part one is the My Bloody Valentine section
- Part two is the ambient/early 60’s section
- Part three is the bed time music section
- Part four is the Cryptograms section
So there you have it, Deerhunter are back and better than ever.
8.5/10
Oliver
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Machiventa // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:10 am
nice review… can’t wait to hear it. the few tracks i have heard are pretty fucking awesome, and even though i hate when people compare albums or rate one over another: based on those tracks i believe the album might surpass cryptograms.
- i love summer albums.
2 oliverx12 // Jun 7, 2008 at 8:49 am
Thanks! in terms of a straight comparison i will say its definitely better than cryptograms but i think its better seen as a natural progression rather than drastic sound change
3 nrmiller // Oct 31, 2008 at 2:40 am
I’m only now getting into this album and it is ace. Much better than Cryptograms, good shit.
4 carol // Nov 7, 2008 at 11:10 am
no no no, i really loved cryptograms, everything was just so perfect!
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