Like 2007’s Parades, Magic Chairs can also be likened to its album cover. Where as Parades Escher-esque cover was meandering and intricate and climbing and falling (as was the music therein), Magic Chairs’s steady structure and floating ribbons hits the music on the mark.
indie rock
Record #134: Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (2009)
Usually, records this obtuse and dense don’t end up being very significant, let alone making any sort of appearance on the Billboard 200 (this peaked at #65). And while it may not necessarily sound weird sonically, like the acoustic guitar that accompanies mastermind David Longstreth’s tenor on the intro of Temecula Sunrise, whatever is going on here is enough to confound, like the rhythmic detours that same intro takes between measures, or the lyrics that pay no mind to the meter of the line singing them.
Record #132: Department of Eagles – In Ear Park (2008)
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.
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 #130: Deerhunter – Microcastle (2008)
With less haze this time around, Deerhunter made just about everyone’s end-of-the-year list, and that in a year that saw Kanye West, TV on the Radio, Beck, and a reunited Portishead releasing records. Continue reading
Record #129: Deerhunter – Cryptograms/Fluorescent Grey EP (2007)
And now, we move into one of my favorite discographies in recent history, if not all time.If you don’t already know, Deerhunter is a force of nature in the indie world, both socially and musically. The group itself is almost less of a band than it is a collaboration between two of the most prolific figures in indie rock, Bradford Cox (a.k.a.
Atlas Sound) and Locket Pundt (a.k.a. Lotus Plaza), even if technically, the band released two albums and an EP before any official release from either one.
Despite their success, Deerhunter is the archetypal garage band–a group of young bucks banging out songs who love listening to music as much as they love creating it, as evidenced by the band blog, curated mostly by Bradford Cox, and the hour long Krautrock version of My Sherona played at an Atlas Sound show.
But despite their prolificacy and media frenzy around them (read: Cox, the most controversial member of the group), Deerhunter first and foremost makes excellent music. Cryptograms, their second album and breakthrough (and the first Deerhunter album Cox doesn’t disown) is absolutely, one hundred percent excellent, and it remains my favorite. The album is split into two halves (on vinyl, two discs). The first half is more atmospheric, with an occasional song peering out of the ambient fog of droning guitars and synthesizers with meaty bass lines and heavily-echoed vocals. “Lake Somerset” veers closely to ambient dance punk, while “Octet,” but for its one-note bass pound, might escape a casual listener for its ambience.
The second half is the conceptual opposite: of the five tracks, only one (“Tape Hiss Orchid”) is an instrumental. The rest are hazy pop songs with hypnotic pounds and shoegazy guitar jangles over trance-like vocals. With the inclusion of the Fluorescent Grey EP on the fourth side, this record almost becomes two separate albums, one more ambient focused and the other pop-song centric.
But the remarkable thing is, they do both well, impressing on each half of the record. Sadly though, as their career has progressed, Deerhunter (and Atlas Sound) have moved away from the atmospheric aspects of their palette. And while the rest of their catalogue is just as excellent, no one does ambient indie rock the way they do here, leaving a void that only Cryptograms can fill.
Record #124: Death Cab For Cutie – Plans (2005)
While it doesn’t reach the same unequivocal classicness of Transatlanticism, Plans isn’t a disappointment to its predecessor.
And much to the indie kids’ relief, there’s little here that betrays Death Cab’s newfound major label deal—if you hadn’t seen the Atlantic label on the back, you might think it was recorded for the same tiny label as the rest of their catalog.
Continue reading
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 #112: Cymbals of Guitars – Why There Are Mountains (2009)
This album essentially sounds like what would happen if a mixtape with all my favorite bands were dropped in a washing machine and jumbled all together.
There are flashes of late Fugazi, TNT era Tortoise, Modest Mouse fury, My Bloody Valentine guitar wash, horn section slow jams a la Anathallo, Radiohead-esque effect pedal jams, and Arcade Fire’s indie stomp–sometimes in the same song. It’s a wild ride, and well worth it.