It is, in fact, 2009. Yes, that’s true, and the flurry of superfluous and not-so-superfluous ranting and raving about those guys who sit in a hippie Korg Circle and sing songs about blades of grass and pit-sweat and their album that is apparently the album of the FOREVER (which, I mean, was something that had been predicted the first time it leaked, straight from their imaginations) and which will serve to divide Resonator Mag in half until someone concedes that that one song is pretty good.
That said, I’ve come to realize that there was an album that pretty much dominated me for ‘08, in the way that an album, as in a cohesive set of songs flowing from one to the other and causing a repeated, addictive desire for a re-start of the entire chronology once it’s completed its’ cycle. For me, in 2008 (and still, bleeding into the edges of 09 as we wait for something other than Merriweather Post Pavilion to surface), that album was the double-disc set of Deerhunter’s Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter: Nothing Ever Happened
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Beyond being my favorite album of 2008, Microcastle contains within it my hands-down favorite song of 2008, “Nothing Ever Happened”. The song’s swirling, melodic, psych-emotive genius perfectly encapsulates what works from start to finish on the rest of the album. As Bradford sings of small-town ennui and an outlook of expecting nothing from nothing, I’m pulled back to my hometown of Marietta, GA-interestingly enough a city that surfaces, if not in name than in thematic reference, in a handful of Deerhunter songs and certainly plays a part in their musical mythos. Marietta’s class-angst, so much potential and so little to do, so much hope and so little way for the dreaming to escape, IS what the sound of “Nothing Ever Happened” is, only, within Bradford’s song, the hope escapes out and into…something. The lyrics, like “focus on the depths that were never there/eliminate what you can’t repair”, take the rest of Microcastle’s Proustian qualities of bedroom stasis and actually force it into a sort of hesitant motion, in which you get the feeling that the song is pulling Bradford, rather than operating under his direction. This, perfectly, is the sound of the small town of Marietta, Georgia. This is the sound I heard growing up.
There was a damn fantastic version of this played at the Microcastle release show in Atlanta on Halloween ‘08, and Southern Shelter has great audio recordings of all of it. I highly recommend the entire concert, front-to-back.
Deerhunter: Never Stops (Platt’s Island Sessions)
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One of the other stickiest songs on Microcastle is the subtle, slowly-pacing-itself “Never Stops”. The night of Microcastle’s release in Atlanta, Bradford unveiled a strictly limited cassette of recordings he’d done solo, on an island somewhere, of Deerhunter music. These recordings wrap the original tunes in a cold sheen of night, and this version of “Never Stops” is sheer narcotic bliss.
Deerhunter: Octet (Simian Mobile Disco remix)
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I’ve been meaning to post this one for a bit, and haven’t had an opportunity. It’s interesting to me what a couple of guys I generally tend to avoid (SMD) do to my favorite song off of one of my favorite albums of 07 (Deerhunter’s Cryptograms) …mostly because it’s heady, trippy, and it works. In spades.
As I said earlier…while I wait for 2009 to show its colors, I’m going to keep Microcastle in my headphones.
