It’s tempting to file this under “see also: Grizzly Bear.” After all, Daniel Rossen, Department of Eagles’ primary songwriter and most-frequent vocalist vocalist is one of the two most prominent voices in Grizzly Bear, and Bear’s other vocalist, keyboardist/founder Ed Droste, is the only member of that group not to appear on this record. And for the most part, none of these songs would sound too out of place on a collection of Vickatimest B-sides (except Teenagers, probably). And it doesn’t help the case against this NOT being a Daniel Rossen solo project that Fred Nicklaus (the other member of Dept. of Eagles) receives only one unique credit on their Wikipedia page: aux percussion.
Author: Nathaniel FitzGerald
Record #131: Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest (2010)
I don’t know why I don’t listen to this record more often.
While it’s true that I prefer the ambient swirls of Cryptograms and Weird Era, Cont.’s shoegaze noodlings, Halcyon Digest’s retro psych-pop sells exactly what I need sometimes. Continue reading
Record #130b: Deerhunter – Weird Era Cont. (2008)
Disappointed that their new record, Microcastle, had leaked onto the internet and was being seeded like crazy, Deerhunter did what any sensible band would do and recorded a new album in secret to be released concurrently with it. But, prolific as they are, Weird Era Cont. is actually longer than Microcastle (only by about a minute, but regardless).
And not being given to repeating the same album twice (Cryptograms: sadface), Weird Era Cont. is often a straight noise-pop record with guitars saturated with shoegaze-ready fuzz (Vox Celeste) and playing figures oblivious to the vocal melody (Ghost Outfit, Slow Swords). Even the title track is played with nothing but feedbacking guitars.
A few of the tracks pair this bent towards noise with doowop influenced pop, such as the instrumental Moon Witch Cartridge and the excellent, dreamy Vox Humana. Admittedly, I’ve never considered shoegaze doowop to be a viable genre, but Deerhunter, with their unstoppable combination of talent and taste*, not only make it work, but they make it work beautifully.
The album closes with the ten minute Calvary Scars II/Aux Out, a remake of the 1:37 long bare-bones track that appeared on Microcastle. Here, free of Cox’s desire to stray away from effects pedals and lingering arrangements, Calvary Scars blooms into a dreampop epic, complete with a repeating chord structure, layers and layers of guitars, wordless melodies, and pounding drums until it falls into a hazy wash of noise that wouldn’t be out of place on Cryptograms. This reversion to reverb and ambience is elemental to Weird Era Cont., informing the decisions made and directions taken from track to track, making it a strong member of the Deerhunter canon and (admittedly) my second favorite Deerhunter album.
*every band has talent. Not every band has taste.
Record #127: The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love (2009)
If your least favorite parts of The Crane Wife were the high-concept, prog-friendly, organ blaring twelve minute suites, then you should probably leave The Hazards of Love alone. Continue reading
Record #126: The Decemberists – The Crane Wife (2006)
The tragic thing about the Decemberists is that their greatest asset is also their biggest liability.
They’re universally lauded or discounted as bookworm friendly, concept heavy, occasionally prog-leaning folk rock, and if you don’t have time for lyrics you need to look up in the dictionary or 12 minute three-part folk-prog suites (namely “The Island”), then don’t even bother.
But, as often as that description is used disparagingly, it’s used by fans to describe why they love the Decemberists–because some people love parsing lyrics and trilogies of songs based on Japanese folk tales that appear out of order on the album, and some of these people also love that the lead guitarist is also credited with playing hurdy-gurdy on the album (unsurprisingly, the Decemberists are from Portland).
Record #120: David Bowie – ChangesOneBowie (1976)
This is the first Bowie record I ever owned, and it’s a wonderful introduction to the pop culture maestro’s catalog. It spends most of its time with his glam rock pioneering Ziggy Stardust era, which is nice, since I don’t have any of those records (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, and Diamond Dogs).
Record #115: The Antlers – Undersea (2012)
Pete Silberman, frontman and former soloman of the Antlers made his releasing cathartic folk wrapped in ambient textures. Hospice, the project’s breakthrough, was heart wrenching, concept heavy, whisper quiet, and sonically (minus the track Bear) and lyrically devastating. Last year’s Burst Apart, however, saw him, following the addition of another multi-instrumentalist and drummer, shifting from that lyric-heavy catharsis and more fully into the ambience.
Record #114: Danielson – Tri-Danielson, Vol. 2: Omega (1998)
Part two of Danielson’s ambitious Tri-Danielson project, Omega is slightly less accessible than Alpha, with a denser track listing and fewer standouts. But to be fair, the entire project is hard to understand.
Record #113: Danielson – Tri-Danielson, Vol. 1: Alpha (1998)
If you don’t know who Danielson (slash Danielson Famile slash Danielson Family slash Brother Danielson slash Daniel Smith) is, you might not be interested at all in his music, which sounds something like a gypsy family band fronted by a helium voiced Gospel camp preacher. Once, while listening to the Omega disc of this double project on my iPod, I took an ear out and put it in a friend’s ear without any warning about what he might here. His face turned from curiosity to displeasure as he said, “why would you do that to me?”
Record #111: Cursive – The Ugly Organ (2003)
As I have mentioned before, despite all of my fascination with krautrock, shoegaze, post rock, electronica, folk, and the like, my musical center has never strayed far from emo.
Something about the sheer devastatingly self-immolating of it has always struck something in me.