Deerhunter “Halcyon Digest” (2010)
The band were originally formed by vocalist Bradford Cox and Moses
Achuleta. Cox let someone else choose the band name as he figured the
band was a short-term ‘art project’ and went on to state that he disliked the
name.
The group’s bass player died in an accident and this added to the
difficulties of making their first album, which was given the
confrontational title "Turn it up Faggot". The band were convinced after this to
carry on recording albums and this is their fifth. Lyrically it deals
with people rewriting their memories to present the picture of their
life they want to remember.
To me lots of this sounds like what I might expect it to sound like if
John Lennon were alive and put in charge of a modern indie-rock band.
The gentle, stripped down "Sailing"
in particular is very Lennon-esque both in the compositional style and
the dreamy yet slightly cutting cadence of the singer's voice.
Lennon's love of sonic experimentation is also shared by the band with
the opening track "Earthquake" is a swirl of psychedelic guitar parts
over a looped percussion track that seems to mix drums with a hint of
other non-musical sounds.
The drum beats are often fairly repetitive and straightforward almost like loops, though on songs like “Desire Lines” and “He Would Have Laughed” the loops are sometimes repeating over 4 bars rather than one or two, so pleasingly more engaging than they necessarily need to be.
The songs often use walls of trippy sounds, but there are some more quite
nice simple tracks amongst that, like the aforementioned "Sailing"
and "Basement Scene". "Helicopter" again goes over a treated beat
building simple quite folky guitar parts which swell to meet the
choruses.
There are a couple of rockier tracks leading up to the finish, including
"Fountain Stairs" which almost has a touch of the Dunedin Sound to it.
The last track "He Would Have Laughed" has a groove to it that's
somehow busy and laidback at the same time. Feels like Lennon mixed
with a bit of Animal Collective.
