"It Never Stops"
(Photo by EduardoO)We hadn't planned on seeing
Deerhunter Tuesday night and that was dumb. Luckily, my brain shifted into gear after a cross country flight, and I was lucky enough to find 2 for face on C-List by 8 a.m. Nice.
Microcastle, soon to be released by
Kranky, has been leaked for almost 3 months and according to iTunes I've played it over 25 times. Yeah, it's good...damn good. When we saw the band play an afternoon set at McCarren (with King Khan) earlier in the summer, we were psyched at how great the rhythmic noise of
Microcastle sounded live. Surely, the band had expanded on the ethereal noize and distorted melodies of
Cryptograms, but
Microcastle is anything but a pop record...Or is it just that,
Deerhunter's pop record.
Bradford mentioned at (le) Poisson Rouge that New York City is noted for blending the "avant garde with the pop" and that pretty much summed up the evening. That, and noize. Lots of it. Loud motherfucking noize that left us with nothing to do but stare at the floor and shake the shit out of our heads until we were dizzy, as if we just spent an hour and a half on an amphetamine driven merry-go-round. It was beautifully ecstatic the way Bradford, Whitney and Lockett built a massive wall of noize behind three guitars, bolstered by an incredibly tight and, dare I say, groovy rhythm section that really is the nuts and bolts of Deerhunter. Without Moses Archuletta's ferocious drumming and Joshua Fauver's driving bass, the band would have no basis for the fervent noize excursions that they invoke. Truth be told, it's the mess of noise, behind simple, yet utterly insatiable rhythms that make Deerhunter great.
We got a good mix of
Cryptograms and
Microcastle material, including "Intro->Agoraphobia", which we hadn't heard live yet, and which Bradford sang, yet Lockett sings on record. Interesting, although I definitely prefer Lockett's vocal on the first proper
Microcastle jam. "Never Stops" and "Nothing Ever Happened" both raged, as did "Strange Lights", "Hazle St" and "Saved By Old Times." Deerhunter is jetting off to Europe this week, but will be back in the states very soon, with shows in both Brooklyn and NYC. I recommend peeping at least one of them, even if you caught them at the pool, because there is nothing better than being drenched in explosive noize in the dark, while bursts of flaming colors blanket the band.
If you've yet to hear the melodic majesty of
Microcastle, peep this vid for two of the albums highlights, which don't sound as good as on record, but you'll get the drift.
Deerhunter "Never Stops" & "Nothing Ever Happened"
I never really thought Lotus Plaza would play any shows, so it was quite a pleasant surprise to see this pop up on the Deerhunter/Atlas Sound/Lotus Plaza blog this morning. "Direct from the mixing desk courtesy of Nathan Brown & Robby Kee," two dudes behind Tree Creature, this set finds Lockett Pundt's beginning with a hazy warble of synthetic mist, before exploding into a sonic barrage about ten minutes in. Of course, the barrage gives way to some blippy, ambient pops and skips. Not as wrapped in ten layers of gauze as you might expect, the bootleg finds Pundt channeling friend Noah Lennox's realm of sampled percussive rhythms and bouncing, looped vocals.
