Deerhunter wants to stay put. To be locked in
windowless rooms. To never age. To sleep. To be dead. In a way, it's ironic
that the Atlanta band gets tagged as punk, even when it's attached to prefixes
like "psych," "ambient," or "art": Punk music agitates for upheaval, but
Deerhunter seeks only stasis. "I had a dream no longer to be free," goes "Agoraphobia,"
and the line summarizes Microcastle: Deerhunter's latest is a complete fantasy, a
shimmering depiction of what it's like to wish fervently for calm, but know
it's not coming.
The harsh, ambient darkness of 2007's Cryptograms is mostly absent on Microcastle, replaced by blazing gold
and orange hues, warmly whirring guitar solos, pepped-up drumming, pop hooks,
and gauzy echoes of Motown and krautrock. The bolder sound signals that
Deerhunter is now less concerned with the scarring effects of loss, conflict, and
the passage of time, and more concerned with the ways to escape those
things—even if that escape is fleeting. On "Little Kids," a group of
drunken youths symbolically reject aging by lighting an old man on fire. But as
the flames rise, so does the sumptuous shoegaze squall and Bradford Cox's soft
insistence that those kids will "get older still." Freedom from hurt:
Deerhunter realizes it's impossible, but Microcastle shows it's a beautiful
idea all the same.