Deerhunter - Microcastle

Back in the winter of 2008 was a band called Deerhunter and their subtle, yet timely ways. I was nothing more than a fresh, young-faced 23-year old punk kid that was lost in the world. Without a soul to stand by and without a way out of the encaged sadness that I was living in for the past year I latched onto the music that was pouring into my heart. Weakness aside, Deerhunter had made an impression on me a year before with Cryptograms and its endless bliss of beauty – please remember to write about that one some. But it wasn’t until the splendid seamlessness of Microcastle that it all finally made sense to me.

See, back in that winter they decided to stop by El Paso for a memorable show. While I reached for the front, we were torn apart by the sheer loudness of the music as we were prime and center. The band wore ear plugs but I remember just feeling overcome with the wave of sounds. “Cover Me (Slowly)” seems like the perfect introduction to “Agoraphobia” anyways and the way Bradford Cox sings, “cover me, cover me” at the beginning of the latter, it just makes sense. I love the way the former is a cloudy disarray of ominous shade and distortion before leading into the sparkling guitar and keyboard of “Agoraphobia.”

Agoraphobia is described as the ‘abnormal fear of being helpless in an embarrassing or inescapable situation.’ I read somewhere else that it’s like being afraid of getting a panic attack during a difficult situation. You feel the smoothness of the fuzzy droning in the background and the way the music ebbs and flows against both the atmosphere and rhythms, like a calming medicine – like if being paranoid and not being able to escape the paranoia – it washes all away. The song is pure pop sugar, one of the myriad of facets Deerhunter pull off so amazingly.


And then there’s the last song on here, “Twilight at Carbon Lake.” Imagery first: a ray of light flashing in the sky in the middle of the sordid water. (how can water be sordid and how can the ray of light flash in the sky? Haha) There’s a lulling, twirling guitar melody that always seems to be creeping in and out of focus. Behind the warbling vocals, the desperate atmospherics and the entire calamity is a soaring entrance and as it swells and swells – adding layers and layers of sounds – into a huge wall of sound, it all disappears so easily. It’s fitting as a closer because of the way it ties in all of this nonsensical dreariness into a blasting array of explosions: it’s beautifully awkward in the way it’s constructed. And it’s devastatingly intense as one of the best songs Deerhunter has ever written. – Bryan