Deerhunter
Microcastle
(Kranky, 2008)

After being leaked online months before its actual release date, the physical version of Deerhunter’s modern classic, Microcastle is finally available. As beautiful and dreamy as it is jarring and remote, Microcastle is the most fully realized work the Atlanta, Georgia outfit has produced to date. It makes good on all the promises of their earlier work, where so much of their potential was hidden underneath blankets of white noise and inaccessible mixtures of scathing post-punk and ethereal meditations.

While the band’s eccentric and often murky frontman Bradford Cox has hinted that Microcastle’s pop influences were too heavy-handed, in fact, the straightforwardness of the songs is more of a suggestion than a demand. For the most part, Microcastle leaves its depth open to interpretation. It is listenable and even catchy, but also complex with a mixture of faraway (“Little Kids”) and in-your-face (“Nothing Ever Happened”) noises.

This method of switching between fast and slow tunes is typical of Deerhunter records—their 2007 breakout Cryptograms, was a frenetic hodgepodge of lengthy ruminations and ripping, clamorous rockers—but for Microcastle the group streamlined their recording style and softened some of the seams between the different-sounding tracks. While Cryptograms was assembled piecemeal and therefore suffered from some inconsistencies, Deerhunter’s current lineup—a quintet including Lockett Pundt, Joshua Fauver, Whitney Petty, and Moses Archuleta—completed the recording of Microcastle in just a week at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn. That incredibly prolific week also birthed Microcastle’s bonus disc, Weird Era Cont., which contains only one double from the album, “Calvary Scars.”

As Cox has proven in live shows, where he allows the dance elements of his songs to shine, he has the ability to accommodate his audience without compromising himself. And so, while Cryptograms requires more work to listen to, this time he’s made an album that’s instantly inviting as well as artistically and fully formed. The songs are shorter and less wandering, more to the point. On first spin Microcastle is great, and on second, it’s one of the best releases this year, if not this decade.

The first time vocals enter Microcastle on the second track, “Agoraphobia.” The unlikely love song could be reclusive Deerhunter mastermind Bradford Cox’s personal anthem. Lyrics such as “I had a dream / No longer to be free / I want only to see / Four walls made of concrete / Six by six enclosed,” describe the cold comfort of being kept in total isolation.

From there fist-pumping anthems and psychedelic ballads trade off. The staccato bassline and soaring choruses of “Never Stops” lead into the distant arpeggios and distant harmonies of “Little Kids.” The album’s tortoise-paced title track, which contains little more than a few lazily strummed chords in its first two minutes, suddenly dives into an up-tempo foot-tapper for the final 60 seconds.

“Calvary Scars” is the album’s least accessible track, but its theme of crucifixion will feel familiar to Deerhunter fans used to watching Cox eagerly sacrifice sanity and physical well-being to perform and create. The fact that this song leads into the album’s most fiery and energetic tracks, “Nothing Ever Happened” and “Saved by Old Times”, the latters features vocals by Cole Alexander of the Black Lips, could be a nod to the positive nature of Deerhunter’s evolution since Cryptograms. The fact is that the stoic and dark themes that drew Cox’s ravenous fanbase to him are still present in the songs, but now so are the smart and well-developed pop tendencies showing that Deerhunter is a band that plans to stick around for a while—a thought that is truly comforting.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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