Deerhunter
Deerhunter’s sound, performances and especially their mercurial leader Bradford Cox have always been all over the place. With that in mind, it didn’t come as a surprise to The Spin that the Atlanta avant-alt-rockers’ Friday show at Cannery Ballroom — the kickoff to a three-week tour behind the band's eighth full-length, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? — was an often thrilling, sometimes uneven affair.
Faye Webster
Despite our best efforts, we didn’t make it in time for rising Atlanta singer-songwriter Faye Webster. Sonically, the onetime Belmont student’s records share some ethereal, avant-R&B qualities with Natalie Prass and Angel Olsen. Webster isn’t a rapper, but her narrative style draws on her long association with the Awful Records collective. At least we have another chance to catch her at Bonnaroo.
Cox has described Deerhunter’s inquisitively titled new LP — which follows 2015’s Fading Frontier — as “a science-fiction album about the present.” Mirroring lyrical motifs of humans losing touch with one another, and of destruction and decay in their various forms, there are moments when Cox’s vocals are warped beyond recognition or crackling in and out, quite literally fading and disappearing. The drum sounds are hyper-compressed and claustrophobic; the guitars, “plugged straight into the mixing desk” per the press release, sound blunt and muted. It’s got some solid tunes, but it’s a bit of a head-scratcher.
Playing Why Hasn’t more or less in order, Cox, guitarist Lockett Pundt, drummer Moses Archuleta, bassist Josh McKay and multi-instrumentalist Javier Morales brought some much-needed color to this bleak collection of songs. Coalescing best in the live setting were the Kinks-referencing “No One’s Sleeping” and especially the album-closing “Nocturne,” which enthralled with languid, open-ended outros that built mountains of guitars around melodic, repeating bass figures — Deerhunter specialties. On record, the transition from the cheerful “Element” to the melancholic “What Happens to People?” seems abrupt. Live, the band jammed out on a segue that bridged the two nicely.
Deerhunter
While the new record could have used more of that spontaneity, Cox isn't known to lock a set list in place and just stick with that. Friday, Deerhunter dug deeply into their discography for staples and rarities alike. The performance was bookended by a pair of album title tracks from different eras of the band’s career, kicking off with the krautrock push of “Cryptograms” from 2007 and ending with the cacophonous “Monomania” from 2013. When the latter record came out, it threw fans for a loop with its intentionally lo-fi production, but seems due for reappraisal.
We also got “Disappearing Ink” from 2009’s Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP, a bass-driven psych-punk ripper making its first appearance in a set list since 2011, perhaps in tribute to late bassist Josh Fauver. (He left the band in 2012, and passed away suddenly in November at age 39.) The encore, meanwhile, gave us “Coronado,” a deep cut from the band’s 2010 high-water mark Halcyon Digest — being played live for the first time ever, according to Cox.
Never one for canned between-song banter, Cox was his usual lively, funny, slightly bitchy self on the mic. Chalk it up perhaps to shaking off the cobwebs, but the band could have been tighter, and the singer-and-sometime-guitarist let them know it. (“What’s wrong? Do you need more time to tune?” he asked late in the set, staring into his phone. “I’m just going to look at pictures of my dog.”)
Deerhunter
Time has been kind to Deerhunter’s back catalog. Halcyon’s sweeping, cinematic “Helicopter” (a highlight of Friday’s set) and early single “Fluorescent Grey” (played near the end) remain experimental-pop perfection, soaring marriages of Bowie- and U2-inspired hooks and bone-rattling Sonic Youth guitarscapes. And the aforementioned “Nocturne,” which ended the main set, showed there’s still noise left to be made.
But anchorless new songs “Futurism” and “Plains” lacked much of a spark, sounding like a band going through the motions. Even with two encores, the concert felt slight for a band with so much material to draw on. At its best, Friday’s show demonstrated that Cox and Deerhunter remain capable of reaching great heights. But we’d be lying if we said it didn’t also leave us wondering how hungry they still are.
See our slideshow for more photos.
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
