Deerhunter

The world of independent music is getting smaller. Or, to put it more clearly, that once-expansive, comb-like maze filled with hidden experiments, sounds, and genres has been excavated and magnified to the point where it no longer has discernible features or points of reference. Iconic labels like SST and K Records, whose mission statement spoke fundamentally to the ethic of “Do It Yourself” and otherwise progress-in-obscurity, have been reorganized—transformed from cultural agents to cultural artifacts—in the shadows of the pseudo-indie juggernauts, Sub Pop and Matador. 2008 marks 20 years since the appearance of underground rock’s most ambitious, interesting, and accessible showcase of work—the showcase to which “indie” perhaps owes its existence—My Bloody Valentine’s “Isn’t Anything,” Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa,” Fugazi’s “13 Songs,” and Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation.” But while those albums all self-consciously operated around or even subverted the tropes and conventions of “pop” music in their own different ways, today’s independent music seems to be working deliberately in the opposite direction. Indie’s current incarnation—the Pitchfork generation—insists, almost to an iconoclastic extent, on wearing the vestments of that underground lineage as a sort of caricature; on aspiring, not to form in spite of experimentation, but experimentation in spite of form. The parameters and the expectations have become more apparent, but a sense of purpose or identity is startlingly absent.

Few albums illustrate this dichotomy, or more precisely, the transitional turmoil that leads to it, more obviously than Deerhunter’s full-length debut, 2007’s “Cryptograms.” That album interchanged relatively light pop songs with long, carefully orchestrated instrumental passages, all covered in a fog of ambient fuzz. The term “ambient” has long slipped out of any useful connotation—it’s become yet another trope, not of pop music, but of indie rock. “Ambient” is a way that an indie rock album should be, and whether its architects know it or not (I’d make the case that Deerhunter does), an exploration of ambient noise in a 2007 rock album is neither novel nor interesting. And yet “Cryptograms” was a critical success in independent circles—blogs, forums, crit-sites, etc.—in exactly the way that it needed to be. Not only did its songs satisfy, but it left the kind of considerable room for growth that induces suspense in fans and critics alike. This, in itself, is yet another device, and it’s embodied in their follow-up, “Microcastle.”

In terms of form, “Microcastle” sheds both the pretension of “Cryptograms” and the monotony of the band’s last release, the EP “Fluorescent Grey.” The album is a mild, atmospheric, and irresistibly catchy progression of dreamy, post-shoegaze pop, anchored in conventional rock structures and traditions. The waltzing, operatic opener, “Cover Me (Slowly),” only drifts in its guitar-effect cloud for a little over a minute before snapping into the more mechanical “Agoraphobia.” The latter’s lyrics are telling of an acquiescence, an acceptance of the confines of the band’s fate as a creative prime-mover: “I had a dream, no longer to be free / I only want to see four walls made of concrete / Six by six enclosed, soon we’re on video.” All the while, there’s an almost whimsical sheen to each song that conceals troubling realizations—like that above—in delicate, beautiful, and strangely ambivalent sound. Three songs so much as hint at the “ambient” past of the band’s prior work—”Microcastle,” “Activa,” and “Green Jacket”—but all three are breathlessly quick compared to the hulking, self-consciously difficult pieces on “Cryptograms,” and all three are elevated by lead singer-songwriter Bradford Cox’s newly-discovered lilt. The more formulaic rock songs are spacey and urgent—they reinforce where “Crypograms” faltered. Chief among them are “Nothing Ever Happened” with its meaty bass-surge and “Twilight at Carbon Lake,” with its swooning, orchestral plunge. And as good as the songs sound, the register of any identity behind them is fleeting at best. The fingerprints of the band are barely visible, as it seems Deerhunter are no longer interested in sounding unique. Like any good indie band these days, they don’t want to sound like themselves, they want to sound like your favorite band. Perhaps the only exception is the serenely sparse “Cavalry Scars,” a minute-and-a-half piece of inspiration, whose airy arrangement of percussion and melody bring a vitality and warmness to the album that bridges that gap.

“Microcastle” is a masterpiece in a new sense of the word. It addresses the impossible demands of a niche and an industry whose goals contradict one another—commercial experimentation, profitable rebellion—but embraces them so wholly that the contradiction becomes a part of the work. “Microcastle” is the testament of a band that has accepted its function and its place, and, in so doing, transcends both.

—Reviewer Ryan J. Meehan can be reached at rmeehan@fas.harvard.edu.