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HOT OFF THE PRESS (#18) - Deerhunter
It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for Nick Courtright’s weekly first glance at music discovered in the last seven days, whether it be just-released, just-leaked, or some long-lost gem that has remained under the radar. Click here for other recent editions of Hot Off the Press, featuring acts such as TV on the Radio, Deerhoof, Cold War Kids, of Montreal, Juana Molina, Crystal Stilts, Final Fantasy, Peter Bjorn & John, White Denim, and Grizzly Bear.
Deerhunter – Microcastle & Weird Era Cont.
officially released October 28th on Kranky
Report Cards: A & B+
It’s easy to understand renowned freak-out Bradford Cox’s recent freak out regarding Deerhunter’s unenviable history with internet leaks. After all, Microcastle was perhaps exhibit 1A of the potential terribleness of leaks and their ability to diminish the significance of an actual release date: while Microcastle finally hit the shelves of your favorite indie record store just last week, the intrepid web scourer probably stumbled upon the album more than five months ago. Yeah, that’s a long time, and the result was that a healthy dose of the excitement surrounding what would have been a highly-anticipated third release was diluted by the spread out nature with which listeners encountered the work. Of course, you could make a counter-argument that the seemingly interminable delay for the album’s actual release date (why did it take so long, after all?) lent enough separation for those who listened to and enjoyed the album months ago to now be reintroduced to it, with greater perspective and, really, a much more refined ear for just how excellent the album ended up being.
But to talk about Microcastle itself is almost a disservice, because there isn’t too much hot off the press about an album whose standout tracks (“Nothing Ever Happened,” “Never Stops,” “Saved by Old Times,” “Agoraphobia”) have all taken their turns on the circuit of blog adoration. So let’s just go ahead and say that Microcastle is an album that sounds pretty good when you first hear it, and gets better as it goes. For those of you who are late to the party (that is, on time to the party, rather than awkwardly early), while the album may initially seem a bit thin in the middle and uncommonly bottom-heavy, don’t worry, all those things will sounds quite fine in due time. And if you don’t believe in the growing power of albums, how about this: give it a month of solid listening, then about four months of only infrequent spinning, then deeply listen to it again. Trust me, it’s good.
So now that the main act is all taken care of, let’s see what there is to say about Deerhunter—and more specifically, Bradford Cox—and how they ambitiously circumvented a totally meaningless release date. They got around irrelevance by packaging with the actual release a full second album. Yeah. Cox is notoriously—read: notoriously—prolific, and that tendency is on full display here, as Microcastle’s companion disc, titled Weird Era Cont., would have sufficed in its own right as an independent release. While it is not nearly as juicy and raucous as its better half, it features a number of tracks which contribute admirably to Deerhunter’s catalog, especially the excellent second track, “Operation,” and the almost-spoken-word eeriness of “Vox Humana.” Although there are a handful of tracks that actually seem like space-filling B-sides, it’s pretty safe to assume that had this been Deerhunter’s official follow-up to early 2007’s widely-lauded Cryptograms, it still would have made a round of critical acclaim.
So the message in all of this is that Deerhunter, first, should keep a better eye on keeping their business on lock-down (unless, of course, you buy the whole suspended satisfaction thing, which I just might), or they should always release one excellent album and then a solid companion album six months later (to make you rediscover and re-love the initial release). And, of course, all those listening to this bounty should take a step back for a moment and say, “Damn, in less than a year those guys just wrote two complete and very good albums. Thanks for that.”
Listen to music by Deerhunter here
Also, check out the Deerhunter blog here
Read more of Nick Courtright’s writing here