Deerhunter – Weird Era Cont Review
Unlike the ubiquitous (and maybe a little tired) use of the hidden track that’s often left for those that forget to turn their stereos off in a stoned haze, Deerhunter’s recent Microcastle release comes with an additional supplementary album called Weird Era Cont. This recording isn’t an extraneous disposable triviality or an indistinct noise experiment or even a discovery waiting for an addled, “oh look, here’s another album” moment of startling sobriety, but a real old-fashioned long-player, which has been surprisingly delivered at the same time as another one.
Where this sister release is placed in the official Deerhunter cannon (fourth? three-and-a-half?) remains to be seen, but in terms of content Weird Era Cont. has a more amorphous quality than the explicit noise-pop approach of Microcastle, while at the same time including “Be My Baby” drum intros (“Vox Humana”) and Pet Sounds-alike instrumental segues (“Moon Witch Cartridge”). Weird Era Cont. may share the same fuzzy effects-pedal sound with some of the more guitar-orientated songs on Bradford Cox’s blog, but instead of producing or a nebulous version of Microcastle or a pseudo bridge between the exploratory jams of album number two and the sonic restraint of album number three, album number three-and-a-half/four documents the sonic expansion of a band.
“Operation” swings joyously between chunky guitars and throbbing organ solos as Cox spits out the words, “I hate you” with barely concealed bile. “Dot Gain” is all echoed momentum and upfront snares and “Slow Swords” (one of the five instrumentals here) is an apex of driving acoustic strums. The ghost of My Bloody Valentine may configure in a cursory consideration of Deerhunter when the juxtaposition of barely audible words with very loud guitars regularly appears, yet the variety of soundscapes on this album extend expectations beyond the usual quiet-verse-loud-chorus method from the old shoegazer bag of tricks.
To compliment this two-for-one album offer, “Cavalry Scars” reappears, but this time as an ascending ten-minute ambient guitar opus, more in keeping with the Daytrotter session and the song’s live incarnation than the sparser ninety-second version found on Microcastle. Like the wonky sound of someone pressing the record button on “Backspace Century”, “Cavalry Scars/Aux Out” ends with the sound of a tape spooling as if Weird Era Cont. is one-side of an imaginary cassette (if it wasn’t delivered by 21st -century means). Such a concept ties into the dispatch of this surprise album, but far from being a lost tape of superfluous material, discovered at random to work as an adjunct to its sister release, Weird Era Cont. successfully prevails as a stand-alone album that just happens to be released with another more prominent one.
Deerhunter – Operation
Deerhunter – Dot Gain
Tags: album
hey, these guys were here last nite