The young artists of today have gotten pretty clever about the way they promote and distribute their music, no one more so than Deerhunter. Their new 7-inch “Revival” (from the forthcoming Halcyon Digest) is not as yet a 7-inch at all, though it’s been released to fans in a manner that any committed record buyer will have to appreciate. With fond memories of the faded photocopied flyers they used to see in the Atlanta record stores of their youths, the band recently asked its followers to print out a flyer for their new album and post it around their hometowns. After e-mailing photos of the successfully posted flyers to the band, those who complied would be rewarded with a link to the band’s new single. I followed this link the other day to a stark black-and-white Deerhunter photo, scattered with random streaming ambient sounds, a download of the single and other unused demos. The mp3 folder, once downloaded, included large PDF images of the a- and b-side labels, which anyone who owns a vinyl pressing plant could presumably use to turn “Revival” into a proper 7-inch.
I mention all of this only to convey the number of neat touches in Deerhunter’s savvy scheme that a true music fan can geek out over, and to call attention to a sort of “promotion by bribery” that could only exist in the Internet age. As for the music, it succeeds on its own terms; Deerhunter, for all their emphasis on packaging, can’t have any doubts that their songs are as worthy of the 7-inch format as those of any other era. Just as they’ve found a way to make the remnants of their nostalgia relevant in the present day, so too their music is not just a remembrance of the comforts of rock ‘n’ roll, but also some of the finest, most impassioned and personal rock ‘n’ roll of the current century.
“Revival” is a full-on Southern shuffle, with perhaps more spring in its step than R.E.M. had at the same point in their career. Singer Bradford Cox is still committed to being inarticulate in his vocals, recalling the long-vanished Stipe mumble of their Athens, GA predecessors, but even so he seems to be obscuring his words with greater confidence than before. It’s as if he’s purposefully inviting the listener to misperceive his lyrics and form their own private relationship with the words. “Revival” has an astonishing number of ideas and textures (heck, even odors) in its 2 minutes and 14 seconds, and these might go unnoticed, but not unfelt, as it races to the finish line. B-side “Primitive 3D” has just as many in the 1:42 before it dissolves into piano ambience. So compact, so tuneful, this might be the most economical music in the Deerhunter discography.
Both tracks are produced by Ben Allen, one of the minds behind Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. But unlike the songs on that album (not to mention his recent work with Cut Copy), which are dense and tangled, straying away from 4/4 time and struggling toward a sense of euphoria, these two fabulous Deerhunter songs are crisp and clean.
Meanwhile, Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox of Animal Collective) is putting out a series of 7-inches (on real vinyl) leading up to the release of his second solo album in September. Panda Bear has generated so much goodwill among his fans that the simple announcement of a new album would create anticipation enough, but the build-up certainly doesn’t hurt.
We last heard Lennox as a guest vocalist on “Walkabout” by Atlas Sound (the side project of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox). Just as one can’t assume that any Animal Collective album will sound like another, so too one can’t assume that Panda Bear’s music will bear more than superficial similarities to his band’s. Like 2007’s Person Pitch, “Tomboy” finds Panda Bear taking a cue from his friend Cox and creating music darker and more personal than Animal Collective’s recent hymns of joy. Lennox has suggested that the title “Tomboy” refers to anything in conflict with itself, and it’s immediately clear that conflict is at the heart of these songs.
“Tomboy” and its b-side “Slow Motion” recall some of Merriweather’s more trancelike passages, but the production is less impenetrable and the melodies are tweaked toward the somber end of the spectrum, resulting in emotional coloring that is perhaps more relatable to the sad music lovers among us. He comes scarily close to recreating the sound of the second side of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, the moment when that band’s infatuation with new rhythms collapses into a beautiful and tentative melancholy. Lennox still has no interest in the sort of nimble rhythms or garage rock staples that excite Deerhunter, but they’re after all not so different, both trying to find their own private corner in the music of their forebears, and by extension relocating younger versions of themselves still in the thrill of musical discovery. I can’t think of anyone who would be more excited by these new 7-inches than young Noah Lennox and young Bradford Cox.
