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Nearly three months have passed since Atlanta psych-rock quintet Deerhunter released their mammoth second full-length, Cryptograms. Now, Kranky is putting out the Fluorescent Grey EP, a set of four intensely focused songs recorded while the album was being mixed. Though clearer and less abrasive than Cryptograms musically, the new EP foregrounds lead singer Bradford Cox's morbidly erotic lyrics about the body's inevitable decomposition-- to him, a psychosexual puzzle-- much as the full-length smothered its gorgeous melodies in effects-laden squall and instrumental ambience. Whether Fluorescent Grey is meant to serve as an epilogue (as its press release maintains) or prologue, the disc is a triumphant document of a stubbornly visionary young band with the world still spread out before them.
"I woke up," Fluorescent
Grey begins, echoing the first words of Cryptograms'
transformative "Spring Hall Convert". This time, though, the setting is the
dark of night; the phrase "fluorescent grey" describes the color
of a boy's dead flesh. Piano gets the EP's
eponymous opening track off to a peaceful start, joined soon by crisply
enunciated vocals and chiming guitar that patiently
explodes into the band's familiar needle-burying territory.
Once again Deerhunter's thematic interests align with those of
author Dennis Cooper-- who named his most famous character after a dear ninth-grade
friend (and later lover)-- as well as director Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, which Cox cited as his favorite movie in a recent
Pitchfork feature. "Why do I dream so often of his body/ When his body
will decay?" Cox wonders in a wiry tenor, adding, "You were my god in high
school." Just when Deerhunter seem most ready to take us into their
confidence, otherworldly Sonic Youth whorls drown the singer's words, his
trusty delay pedal lifting the song to an open-ended conclusion.
Fluorescent Grey's taut compositions simmer with the doomed purity of Deerhunter's romantic
vision. "In the world there are so many useless bodies," Cox sings on midtempo "Dr. Glass", listing as examples "all the couples
kissing, the children missing, the corpses rotting." His voice here is
measured, accompanied by restrained organ-like
loops, plus the usual guitar, bass, and drums. The closest thing on the EP to the
chaos of Cryptograms' first third is high-school
kiss reminiscence "Wash Off", which relies on droning motorik bass and
treated vocal textures similar to those on the full-length's title track.
"I was 16," Cox repeats, his reserve finally shattering in an
inspired racket.
At the most basic level, what makes Deerhunter so profoundly
affecting is the band's joy at rocking the fuck out-- free of both irony and any self-conscious
lack thereof-- within their songs' impressive intellectual and emotional
framework. "Like New" distills this energy into little more than two
minutes, its dissolute guitars revolving around a deceptively soothing refrain.
"Back to the crypt again," Cox intones. The CD version of Fluorescent Grey (as opposed to the
vinyl side included in the Cryptograms
double-LP release) also includes the hypnotic video for "Strange
Lights", bringing Deerhunter's current phase neatly full circle: Ashes
to ashes, and then wake up all over again.
-Marc Hogan, April 16, 2007
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