Bradford Cox is getting creepily serendipitous. He puts himself on Chris’s car stereo just in time for Chris’s response, and guides Chris and Brandon to the same lyric by sheer metaphysical willpower. That lyric: “Gave me bruises after the first time.” Spooky. Get out of our heads, Cox!
Stream Parallax with song-by-song writeup from Bradford Cox at NY Times Magazine.
Atlas Sound – “Flagstaff”
From: Chris Atto
To: Brandon Hall
Yo yo – hopefully your body is back to not feeling miserable. And yes, that Twin Sister album is lovely. So, where to begin?
I tend to agree with you that everyone likes Deerhunter and/or Atlas Sound but it/they are nobody’s favorite band. Except, of course, for that guy standing next to me when I saw them at Lollapalooza a few years ago. I somehow managed to be in the front row, a nearly impossible feat at a large festival, after several bands I wanted to see played at the same stage. The guy next to me, well, Deerhunter was clearly his favorite band.
It’s interesting how you noted that some of the people who are most oft labeled as genius are the ones who never seemed to reach the critical mass of success, but everyone in that list seemed to do something that pushed the envelope a little further than it was pushed before (by the way, what does that expression even mean?), though I don’t know that Cox is doing that. But as he just said in an interview that I just so happened to hear on my drive home from work today (how convenient!), he said he doesn’t give a fuck what any of us think about his music or what his songs are about. The other most interesting thing he said was that “Flagstaff” is about something really bad, he’s not quite sure what it is, but something catastrophic, and that the song ends in this accidental soundscape that is sort of like reflecting on what just happened, whatever that may be. I just listened to the song and did not get that impression at all, but that’s probably just because I’m bad at listening to and comprehending lyrics. To me, that was just another one of those slow songs that I probably won’t remember but that has a cool and sort of trippy ending to it.
The THIRD most interesting thing he said was that he really believes in what every single song is about that he’s ever written, except for “Mona Lisa”, and that that song is exactly about something that’s purely aesthetic with no meaning behind it. So it’s just kind of funny that both of us pointed that one out as one of the most memorable songs on the album. But perhaps that’s just telling of the world we live in today, or something.
So, what have we learned here? Both of us like the album but probably won’t come back to it, just like so many other Cox projects before. Both of us still think he’s a great musician who can pump out quality material like it’s nobody’s business, but that it is often fleeting. And most importantly, whether or not we think Cox is the musical genius that Pitchfork et al. have made him out to be, he doesn’t give a fuck what any of us think. And isn’t that what being a musician is all about?
Aside: while perusing for a lyric with which to finish this note, I picked a random song and scrolled to a random point in that song, and the first thing I heard was, “Gave me bruises after the first time”.
“Everything looks the same,”
Chris
Parallax is out 11/8 on 4AD.
AudioVole 
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