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Tour Dates 10/31/08 Microcastle Record Release Show @ Variety Playhouse w/ Pylon, Jay Reatard, Times New Viking Atlanta, Georgia
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11/01/08 Orange Peel w/ Times New Viking, Vera Fang Asheville, North Carolina 11/02/08 Cat’s Cradle w/ Times New Viking, Lake Inferior Carrboro, North Carolina 11/03/08 Ottobar w/ Times New Viking, AIDS Wolf Baltimore, Maryland 11/04/08 Black Cat w/ Times New Viking, Knyfe Hyts WASHINGTON, Washington DC 11/05/08 First Unitarian Church w/ Times New Viking, Knyfe Hyts Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 11/06/08 Terrace F. Club w/ Knyfe Hyts, Times New Viking Princeton, New Jersey 11/07/08 Music Hall Of Williamsburg w/ Times New Viking, Knyfe Hyts Brooklyn, New York 11/08/08 Bowery Ballroom w/ Times New Viking, Vivian Girls New York, New York 11/09/08 DCU Center w/ Nine Inch Nails Worcester, Massachusetts 11/10/08 Paradise w/ Times New Viking, Vivian Girls Boston, Massachusetts 11/11/08 Theatre Plaza w/ Times New Viking, Neighborhood Council Montreal, Quebec 11/12/08 Lee’s Palace w/ Times New Viking, Neighborhood Council Toronto, Ontario 11/13/08 Crofoot Ballroom w/ Times New Viking, Disappears Pontiac, Michigan 11/14/08Grog Shop w/ Times New Viking, Disappears Cleveland, Ohio 11/15/08 Metro w/ Times New Viking, Disappears Chicago, Illinois 11/16/08 High Noon Saloon w/ Times New Viking, Disappears Madison, Wisconsin 11/17/08 Triple Rock Social Club w/ Times New Viking, Disappears Minneapolis, Minnesota 11/20/08 Richards On Richards w/ Times New Viking, BARR Vancouver, British Columbia 11/21/08 Neumos w/ Times New Viking, BARR Seattle, Washington 11/22/08 Hawthorne Theatre w/ Times New Viking, BARR Portland, Oregon 11/24/08 Great American Music Hall w/ Times New Viking, BARR San Francisco, California 11/25/08 El Rey Theatre w/ Times New Viking, BARR Los Angeles, California 11/28/08Casbah w/ Nite Jewel, Times New Viking San Diego, California 11/29/08 Modified Arts w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel Phoenix, Arizona 12/01/08 Palladium Loft w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel Dallas, Texas 12/02/08 Emos Alternative Lounge Outside w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel Austin, Texas 12/03/08 Warehouse Live w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel Houston, Texas 12/04/08 Chelsea’s w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel Baton Rouge, Louisiana 12/05/08 One Eyed Jacks w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel New Orleans, Louisiana 12/0/08 Bottletree w/ Times New Viking, Nite Jewel Birmingham, Alabama |
Microcastle is one of those albums it took me a while to figure out how to actually review, which means it's a good thing they gave us an absurd amount of lead time on it, and I've had it to listen to all summer (this thing has seriously been on my iPod for about the past two months or so). Deerhunter's last full-length, Cryptograms, explored noise and ambient music in a pop context, largely pushing the more pop tracks into the second LP. The vinyl edition came with the next EP, Fluorescent Grey, a largely pop affair, on the D-side, and they ran quite nicely into each other.
Microcastle picks up about where they left off and sort of comes back around full circle. After a short instrumental intro, they're in full-on pop song territory with “Agorophobia,” which might be one of the most explicitly sexual indie rock songs ever written. Blending a new wavey bass driven sound with sunny pop melodies seems to be what this album (or, at least, its A-side; I'll explain this shortly) is all about. “Never Stop” takes the pop element even farther, with a bigger guitar sound drenched in reverb and feedbacking all over the place with everything building into an ecstatic outro sort of reminiscent of The Arcade Fire, if they were too stoned to be excited about much. “Little Kids” slows things down a bit, drowns the vocals in reverb and lowers them in the mix, and then proceeds to drown everything else out into a strange noisy pop drone. The title track, “Microcastle,” seems like a strange contrast to this, with its sparse arrangement and relatively untouched (aside from a little reverb) vocal sound. It's not until the last minute or so the distortion kicks in and then the whole thing abruptly grinds to a halt. “Calvary Scars” is more a straight-up ambient thing that serves as a really nice lead-in to the Sigur Rós-styled piano of “Green Jacket,” a song that is almost staggering in both its sparse expansiveness and its brevity. The last third of this sandwich is “Activa,” which brings to mind the “swamp of noise” (because it sounds to me like someone writing songs around a bunch of sounds they recorded at some sketchy looking house in a swamp somewhere) sound of their last album. I get the feeling these tracks are probably intended to make the listener sort of uncomfortable in preparation for the album's first single, “Nothing Ever Happened” bringing the band back into full on pop song territory. This track is about as straight-up “indie rock” as these guys get. It reminds me a little bit of Yo La Tengo with its extended, sort of “jammy” instrumental outro, which takes up about half the time devoted to the song. “Saved by Old Times” is written around a bluesy guitar line and the actual song gives way to goofy samples of people yelling at each other incoherently played forward and backwards. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but the song itself is great and turns into a weird ambient post-punk thing at the end. The next track, “Neither of Us, Uncertainly,” is more an ambient thing with lots of reverb and a nice hypnotic melody. The outro leads into “Twilight at Carbon Lake,” which sort of reminds me of Built to Spill with its expansive sound and melancholy pop vocal melody, as well as its use of guitar interplay. Even Bradford Cox sort of channels Doug Martsch with his vocal style on this one. The biggest difference is that where Built to Spill would turn the song into an epic jam session, Deerhunter drowns it, bludgeons it, and destroys it with layers upon layer of guitars and feedback with equally majestic results.
So basically, this album is good. I like it about as much as I liked Cryptograms, but for different reasons. The last album was more about ambient strangeness. This album is pretty much the closest thing to a pop album they've written so far. It's really good and I recommend it highly.
These guys are headed out on tour with Times New Viking (who are also awesome in their own way). More info can be found at the band's MySpace page, and also at the blog where Bradford Cox posts a lot of song downloads, mostly for his other band, Atlas Sound.
