Thursday, June 18, 2009

come to bed because you're making me sleepy


DEERHUNTER - MICROCASTLE


The slow guitar line echos along, and the voices sigh in tune. The drums bash in the background, and it all sounds like a My Bloody Valentine B-side, and you've started swaying around as if you just got punched in the head. The voice warbles and contorts, and the cymbals smash every beat or so, helping it all climax. Then the real vocals start. Come for me. Comfort me. Cover me, all interchangeable of course. You just crossed the moat into the Microcastle, a fine assortment of old-school rock, psychedelic, folktronica (yes, that is a marvellous wonderful word), shoegaze and many many other lovely little genres.

The sounds are cheeky and yet some how wise-sounding. It is to their merit that we finally see a fusion album of genres that actually do belong together, rather than the average novelty of fusion which generally doesn't work, musically or in any other sense. Songs like Microcastle, the eponymously named song, and the following Calvary Scars take a clear bow towards the New Wierd America subgenre (which features entities like Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Joanna Newsom and Grizzly Bear are a part of), while Nothing Ever Happened and Never Stops link back to a more traditional rock'n'roll.

And then there's the sweet, lullaby-like sounds of Agoraphobia. I have a friend with agoraphobia, and he just recently finished his run of being homeless. How ironic. I should show him this song, it's so warm, fuzzy and lovely. I want to give it a big cuddle. The sort of music you see as the couple rides on a Vesper through the inner-city streets of Paris on a perfect summer's day...

Anyway. Microcastle is a succesful attempt of introducing a variety of sub-genres to each other, without letting them kill each other. See that skull in his eye? That's your head after spontaneous combustion from this album's pure awesomeness. Perfect, really.

Favourite Song: Agoraphobia

Favourite Line: "...but this futile coffin will not let us gain entry into the immortal soul of the redneck..."

No comments:

Post a Comment