Deerhunter Halcyon Digest (4AD)
5/5
By: Hayley Leaver
Atlanta’s own Deerhunter manage to elude that ever-widening niche often occupied by any number of garage/psych/shoegaze artists labelled ‘dreary’ for several reasons. For a start, their first album was titled Turn It Up Faggot - a reference to taunts the band received in early live shows. Then there’s the frontman himself: Bradford Cox – a man rarely far from a dress, never side-stepping the topic of his Marfan Syndrome, and unafraid to speak his mind with probably the most interesting blog of any musician, ever (Kanye, who?). But unlike those other bands shrouded in a dramatic onstage persona, it’s easy to listen to Deerhunter and just really adore what they do without it being overshadowed by Bradford and his elongated, dress-toting limbs.
Having released two of the best albums of the last ten years in the form of Cryptograms and Microcastle, a slight hiatus ensuing after the latter, the band’s next LP shows a slight change of pace. Halcyon Digest has less of the Animal Collective weirdness and more of the Dandy Warhols’ dreaminess – but worry not, it’s still bloody good. Apparently an album of sentiment, Halcyon Digest draws on a sense of nostalgia without hanging on to what the band have produced before in terms of their music. If there were any murmurings of Deerhunter edging towards more conventional ‘indie’ with Microcastle, then this latest offering puts it all to rest with its cryptic moans, its gentle whispers of something impossible to settle a finger on.
And that’s the reality with Halcyon Digest – it has echoes of something we’ve known and loved before: ‘Don’t Cry’ has the fuzzy growl of Deerhunter-gone-by, but it immediately disappears with ‘Revival’ – the Mark Bolan/Devendra Banhart-esque warbling embrace of “I am saved, I am saved” a long world away from the “Nothing left to pray” of Microcastle’s ‘Agoraphobia’. Moving on, there are moments of Halcyon Digest that are a little unexpected: ‘Desire Lines’ initially made me think I’d jumped over to Arcade Fire in a moment of iTunes shuffle madness, but in actual fact is guitarist Lockett Pundt taking the reins for the first of two songs he wrote for the album.
While there is no doubt that Bradford will remain the patron saint of modern shoegaze in ATP circles (take a butcher’s at the video of Deerhunter and the Deal sisters at the Breeders’ ATP; I dare you to not fall in love with him), the fact that this is the band’s fourth LP since 2005 - never mind the EPs and side-projects - should mean that quality is bound to start waning. The reality is that Halcyon Digest laughs in the face of that idea, and this has to be down to Cox et al’s preference for ‘mistake-oriented music’ – the unrehearsed, unabashed hatred of the mundane. Take ‘Coronado’, Halcyon Digest’s penultimate track, glistening with the unmistakeable sound of a saxophone. Yep - a saxophone. The song comes as a result of Bradford listening to a lot of Exile On Main Street and wanting to get in before every other band stuck a sax on their next album, “because saxophones are just cool” - one of Halcyon Digest’s shining highlights.
Something that may be apparent to anyone who has followed Atlas Sound as much as Deerhunter is the striking similarity between Bradford’s solo material and Halcyon Digest, the latter reiterating the experimental, more chaotic style of the former more than it follows any ‘natural progression’ of Deerhunter material. Never mind that that would be stating the flipping obvious, seeing as Bradford sings, writes, and plays guitar on both, the subtle differences are there to be heard, if you listen hard enough. It’s the closing track on Halcyon Digest, ‘He Would Have Laughed’, which exemplifies this similarity unashamedly – and for good reason. Dedicated to Jay Reatard, the song is seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds of cryptic gloom, a disquieting ode to the band’s friend – not that you could get that just from listening to it. Halcyon Digest is cavernous and at times furtive, but ultimately is a fluctuating stream of genius from one of the few bands of the past decade who manage to never disappoint.
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Artists in this article: Deerhunter
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