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DEERHUNTER

Deerhunter

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?

As thrilling and unpredictable as anything in Deerhunter’s near 15-year career, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? was recorded in several strategic geographic points across North America, and produced by the band, Cate LeBon, Ben H. Allen III, and Ben Etter. Forgetting the questions and making up unrelated answers, Deerhunter’s eighth LP is a science fiction album about the present. Exhausted with the toxic concept of nostalgia, they reinvent their approach to microphones, the drum kit, the harpsichord, the electromechanical and synthetic sounds of keyboards. Whatever guitars are left are pure chrome, plugged straight into the mixing desk with no amplifier or vintage warmth.

STAFF COMMENTS

Javi says: Is it a guitar? Is it a synth? Is it some old-time harpsichord-y thing plugged through a sh*t-ton of reverb? Your guess is as good as mine. The only thing for sure is that indie darlings Deerhunter have created their most consistent and nuanced album since 2010’s ‘Halcyon Digest’ in their seventh LP, ‘Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?’.
With fellow Top 20 maverick Cate Le Bon at the production helm, there’s nothing the band can’t do—whimsical groove-laced indie and atmospheric expansiveness are married perfectly on songs like the opener “What Happens to People?” and penultimate bop “Plains”, and just as the voice of God bids us good morning on “Detournement”, guitarist Lockett Pundt’s sole offering “Tarnung” is already preparing to tuck us into bed.
Every song is a stutter-funk gem, a space-age exploration of pastoral life, a strutting jaunt into the end of days. Every song is a grower, and boy, how big they grow…

TRACK LISTING

1. Death In Midsummer
2. No One’s Sleeping
3. Greenpoint Gothic
4. Element
5. What Happens To People?
6. Détournement
7. Futurism
8. Tarnung
9. Plains
10. Nocturne

Deerhunter

Fading Frontier

    Fading Frontier is the seventh studio album by Deerhunter. The record was made by founding members Bradford Cox, Lockett Pundt and Moses Archuleta, and bassist Josh McKay. Written in their hometown of Atlanta, GA, production duties were shared by the band and Ben H. Allen III, continuing a collaboration that began with 2010’s Halcyon Digest.

    Following the death-rattle garage catharsis of 2013’s Monomania, the group has shifted towards something strikingly balanced, focused on melody and texture. The songs are brighter; if not in content, then in the album’s production. Starkness plays against clutter in what is the band’s most complex yet accessible work to date.

    Fading Frontier shows that a decade in, Deerhunter has lost none of its intensity. As the group matures, so they have grown into the most consistent purveyors of art-rock of their generation.

    Deerhunter

    Monomania

      Bradford Cox's music is the stuff of an obsessive and unquiet mind. Everything about the singer's approach to music — whether he's dumping four discs' worth of home recordings onto the Internet with little fanfare or smearing fake blood onto his spindly, dress-clad body onstage — has a chaotic, haunted quality to it, even in painstakingly crafted recordings that layer his sound with atmospheric psychedelia.

      All of which makes Monomania a perfect title for an album by Cox's band : A single-minded obsession with music is so clearly what's kept him intact and whole throughout his adult life. But this particular collection, the sound of which he describes as "nocturnal garage," has a dirtier, wirier, looser and less fussed-over feel than he's often cultivated in recent years. Five studio albums into Deerhunter's existence, Monomania captures Cox's gift for self-laceration and unpredictability, but it moves in a less studio-bound direction, closer to the raw and unhinged spirit of his live shows.

      Monomania's gnarly dissonance leaves a bit less room than usual for glimmers of beauty — though they shine through in a few haunting tracks like "The Missing" — as Deerhunter opts more often for the raw, noisy, slurred and basement-friendly feel of "Pensacola." Elsewhere, "Blue Agent" meets somewhere on Deerhunter's continuum between sideways prettiness and the sort of thorniness that ensures arm's-length distance. Even as its sound continues to shift unpredictably, Deerhunter has maintained that balance throughout its fruitful run — no small task, coming from a man whose entire artistic persona is rooted in an understanding that balance doesn't come easy, even on the best days.

      STAFF COMMENTS

      Andy says: Less Shoegaze, more Velvets. Always good songs!

      Deerhunter

      Microcastle

        "Microcastle" is the follow-up to 2006's critically lauded "Cryptograms" and was recorded over the course of a week at the Rare Book Studios in Brooklyn, NY with studio proprietor Nicolas Verhes (Les Savy Fav, Silver Jews). All tracks on the record feature Bradford on lead vocals except "Agoraphobia" and "Neither Of Us, Uncertainly", which are fronted by guitarist Lockett Pundt, while "Saved By Old Times" also features a vocal collage by Cole Alexander of The Black Lips. It's a more immediate album than it's predecessor, and although not exactly what you'd call a 'pop' album it's much more accessible. In fact, it kind of falls somewhere between "Cryptograms" and Bradford Cox's solo project Atlas Sound. The songs range from shimmering slow fuzz, at times bringing to mind 80s 4AD acts like Ultra Vivid Scene, to more upbeat, psyche-pop experiments. The mood and tempo change constantly, but that's not to say it's disjointed, it all flows beautifully, all the while pulling influences from all over the place; 60s doo-whop to Kraut to garage punk, all filtered through a shoegaze-fuzz. A wonderfully uplifting, off-kilter pop album. Set to be a Piccadilly Records favourite!


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