Deerhunter – Microcastle

Microcastle – Deerhunter
By Aidan Roberts

Now here is a dark horse in the indie sector – Deerhunter, with their trippy psychedelic walls of noise and harmony, return from their last album Cryptograms with Microcastle, a slightly subtler mix which hails less to their maniacal electronic psychedelia and more to the spooked-out garage of early Jefferson Airplane, perhaps by way of My Bloody Valentine. These songs are dark and quietly ferocious, easing the listener into their world with the cleverly linked Cover Me (Slowly) and Agoraphobia and traversing a range of musical terrain from misty guitar soundscapes to freaky Wilson-esque harmony clouds. It seems the band have shifted their palette a little from the bloodthirsty noise of Cryptograms, though that is definitely still present in moments. The long gestation period for this album has delivered a dense work, cinematic and insidious, culminating in an anthemic climax with the irresistibly evocative Twilight At Carbon Lake. This is the sound of a band relaxing a little, taking a carefully considered breath before a serious change of wind, and is a welcome chapter in their increasingly creative canon.

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