The New Music

Need to know: Deerhunter is a four piece consisting of Bradford Cox, Moses Archuleta, Josh Fauver, and Lockett Pundt. Subsequent to forming in Atlanta, Georgia, they released their first album in 2005 called Turn It Up Faggot. Throughout many changes in the roster, Deerhunter have continued to produce a steady flow of albums, EPs and rarities, though it wasn’t until 2008, with the release of the accomplished Microcastle, along with it’s bonus disc Weird Era Contd, that Deerhunter began to receive serious critical acclaim. Having begun their career with the intent to induce hypnotic states livened with the forcefulness of punk, they have since evolved their style into the ambient shoegaze genre heard in it’s perfected form on Halcyon Digest. The album gained pre-release buzz with their guerilla marketing, urging fans to download a promotional poster created by Cox to put around neighborhoods with the reward being a leak of the tracklist and album artwork.

100 words of less: Deerhunter’s fourth studio album sounds exactly as the title suggests. As Cox has cited, Halcyon Digest “is a reference to a collection of fond memories and even invented ones. [...] The way that we write and rewrite and edit our memories to be a digest version of what we want to remember, and how that’s kind of sad.” Indeed, it’s a compilation of songs that harkens the intimacy of an idyllic time in the past, climaxing in the first single, “Revival”. However, the somber tone conveys an underlying sadness that results from applying this selective process to cope with something as intricately interdependent as memories. This antithesis of happiness and sadness comes to life in the second single, “Helicopter”, boasting a fluid synthesis of these oppositions. Deerhunter’s tribute to the late Jay Reatard in “He Would Have Laughed” at just over seven minutes long, abruptly polishes off Halcyon Digest, leaving listeners feeling similar to how they perceived Jay Reatard’s short life, that it has ended too soon.

Best track: Revival

RIYL: Atlas Sound, No Age, Wavves, Women, Panda Bear

Rating: 9/10

Buy, download, steal or don’t bother: Buy

Sample: Helicopter

Website: http://halcyondigest.com