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Deerhunter Microcastle Music Review

Posted on 21. Dec, 2008 by Administrator in Music

Upon first listen, Microcastle sounds almost nothing like Deerhunter’s last full-length, Cryptograms. The new disc is chock full of 60s pop melody and the occasional bit of clean guitar–a sharp contrast to the bombastic post-punk and droning dirges of the last album. Further listens, however, reveal subtle experiments and psychedelic touches that prove Deerhunter has not shed the “ambient punk” tag. After the instrumental intro “Cover Me (Slowly),” Microcastle kicks off with “Agoraphobia,” a surprisingly sparse and simple track that finds crooned vocals resting on a bed of soft guitar and reverb. The creepy, claustrophic lyrics prove a nice contrast to the song’s gentle demeanor (“I had a dream/No longer to be free/I want only to see/Four walls made of concrete/6 by 6 enclosed.”) “Never Stops,” the next track, incorporates a jerky rhythm structure and some expansive sonic textures, and “Little Kids” is awash in liquid guitar and a chorus that becomes almost hypnotic as Cox repeats it (“to get older still, to get older still”). 

The middle section of the album—“Cavalry Scars”, “Green Jacket”, and “Activa”—finds the band returning to the amorphous musical landscapes and distant vocals of the more challenging tracks on Cryptograms, but the album is reeled back in by “Nothing Ever Happened,” a punky shoegaze anthem with a more-than climactic ending. “Saved By Old Times” is the closest thing to a blues song Deerhunter has written, and the final track, “Twilight at Carbon Lake” is a perfect marriage of the Everly Brothers and Deerhunter’s noise noodlings. 

Microcastle is more accessible than Cryptograms, but that’s not a bad thing. Deerhunter has taken dense layers of noise and structured perfect pop songs around them—a feat that makes this album a contender for one of the year’s best. Oh, there’s also a bonus disc of additional material, Weird Era Cont., but it’s good enough to warrant a separate review… 

Good For: Eating pickles upside down, cooking a new dish, airplane rides, Disneyworld, breaking into the Magic Castle and spending the night there…or spending the night in a mall for that matter, building sandcastles in the rain, hugs. Bad For: John Hughes’ gym music, breakdancing, hunting, terrorist meet and greet functions. – by Bill Dvorak

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Tags: Deerhunter, Microcastle