Thursday, September 18, 2008

Deerhunter / Microcastle

Deerhunter may have passed under my radar unnoticed before with the release of 2007's Cryptograms, but this time around, they caught me and they've got me for sure.  Microcastle isn't due for release until October, but since it is up on iTunes, I figured it was fair game.  I had heard the song "Nothing Ever Happened" over the summer and was basically entranced, but there was no way that the album as a whole could be that great, right?  Think again.

Microcastle gets off to a good start with the appropriately titled "Intro," and from there it is full speed ahead with the spacey vibe that envelops every track.  "Agoraphobia" is a shoegaze lullaby, followed by "Never Stops," which I have listened to at least five times a day for the last week, and "Little Kids" is perfectly psychedelic, like one of the Brian Jonestown Massacre's more melodic, hypnotic cuts.  The middle of the album strays out into super ambience territory, but brings it right back with "Nothing Ever Happened," the track that rocks the hardest on the album.  A bit of blues works its way into "Saved by Old Times" and then escalates into some of the flower power sound from before.  Finally, the last two tracks offer a last blast of focused noise that rounds out the album and leaves you suspended in space.

Even though it really came out this summer, Microcastles seems to have just the right mood for what you want to listen to when there is a blanket of fall fog outside your window; the dreariness of a cloudy day and the jitters of that extra cup of coffee it takes to wake you up are all inside this record, so take full advantage of its early availability and hear the leaked album that everyone is talking about. -A

1 comment:

Robert Langellier said...

The Dear Hunter
Deerhunter
Dear and the Headlights

I can't separate them. They're all the same to me. That should change.