Another Deerhunter review

Microcastle
/ Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter
4AD / Kranky, 2008
5 stars

It’s been a bitter-sweet year for Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox. In May, Microcastle leaked on the internet - a full five months before its official release. Then, about a month ago, as he was preparing for the album’s physical release, Cox accidentally leaked the album’s ‘secret’ second disc Weird Era Cont., as well as an unfinished Atlas Sound (his solo side-project) album slated for release in 2009. Oops. Well, whether you’re hearing it for the first time now, or you listened to it too much in May and are only re-discovering it now (like yours truly), there’s no denying that Microcastle is a cut above. Not just a fine indie-pop album with experimental rock, shoegaze, ambient and doo-wop elements - it’s actually two of them. The upbeat, three-in-one rocker Nothing Ever Happened is the most obvious ‘single’, but surrounding it are so many other great tracks (Agoraphobia is a gorgeous – if somewhat disturbing - guitar lullaby, and closer Twilight at Carbon Lake is like an Everly Brothers song drowned in reverb) that you’re best off playing the whole lot in order. And that’s just the first disc. These guys could have easily held onto Weird Era Cont. for a few months and released it as an album in its own right – and a bloody good one at that - but Cox and co have that much output that you imagine they’ll probably have another album ready by then anyway. This will be very, very hard to top for album of the year.

Artwork: A
This album, and its artwork, is so hard to fault that it kind of pisses me off.

Published in mX, Thursday November 13, 2008.