Bradford Cox’s Deerhunter side/solo-project, Atlas Sound’s third official LP, Parallax hits the shelves tomorrow. Everyone is really excited about it. Everyone except Brandon and Chris. The two of them got together this week to try to figure out what the big deal was. Their conclusion was about as unsatisfying as every Bradford Cox album. (Which means Pitchfork fucking loved this dialectic!)
Stream Parallax with song-by-song writeup from Bradford Cox at NY Times Magazine.
Atlas Sound – “Mona Lisa”
From: Brandon Hall
To: Chris Atto
Hey, Chris. First, let me say that Parallax is kind of perfect music when the cold medication kicks in and your muscles start to twitch with the fatigue that’s rapidly flooding your senses in a valiant effort to save you from a night of coughing, sniffling, aching…
I’m hurting dude. Hurting bad. Sorry this letter is so late.
Anyway. Parallax is meant to score an underwater dreamscape, right? Heavy reverb on the voice and looping guitar lines, bubbling, refracted melodies, hypnotic, ethereal instrumental lines that feel like floating or drowning depending on the song but usually one or the other.
Beyond that, though, I don’t know what to say about Bradford Cox or his Deerhunter side/solo bedroom project, Atlas Sound. Am I the only person in the Indie world who’s completely bored by this? It’s not even that I don’t like any of it. To the contrary — I like most of it. I’ve listened at length to every Deerhunter and Atlas Sound LP and most of their EPs. When the tastemakers at P4K told me I had to hear Cryptograms or Microcastle or Halcyon Digest or Atlas Sound’s latest official LP, Logos, I ran out and bought a copy. (Literally. I’m still a record store rat and will continue to be until they close the last one down. At which point I’ll have to open my own.)
But I digress. I have enjoyed each and every last one of these albums. Yet, not a single one has ever stuck with me. In fact, for the most part, they’ve bled together so seamlessly, I could hardly tell you what song came from what album.
There’s a lot to like on Parallax. The album is bookended by the kick-ass, jangly “The Shakes” and the raucous, thrilling closer, “Lightworks.” “Mona Lisa” and “My Angel is Broken” are incredibly catchy pop songs that should be heard by everyone, that would be a welcome addition to any mix, but like the rest of the album, are ultimately as fleeting and intangible as their subject matter. When the songs end, there seems to be little left of them; they don’t get caught in my head, I don’t hum them to myself walking down the street. The songs on this album are like a dry wine that leaves no aftertaste. It’s better than a bitter aftertaste, but, I mean…
P4K just BNM’d Parallax and gave it an 8.7
Logos (BNM’d 8.2)
Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel (BNM’d 8.6)
Halcyon Digest (BNM’d 9.2)
Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. (BNM’d 9.2)
Cryptograms (BNM’d 8.9)
Even by Pitchfork’s standards of pet bands, wherein they decide a band or artist is the greatest thing ever and seem to give up objectivity altogether in favor of perpetuating the myth of greatness they themselves created (see: Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Animal Collective), this is kind of ridiculous in its prodigious, prolific consistency. And it seems rather misleading. Can you think of any other band that has been consistently great enough to warrant those numbers? That’s a Beatles-esque run.
What am I missing? These albums are all very good and really enjoyable for a few spins. But they’re all pretty quick to get lost in the shuffle. I feel like I’m watching the housing bubble inflate and inflate, just waiting for it to pop. Why is everyone else so geeked to hear the same stuff from Cox? Help me out, Chris. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
“When you’re down, you’re always down.”
Brandon
Atlas Sound – “Te Amo”
From: Chris Atto
To: Brandon Hall
What’s up Brandon? Long time no talk. Sorry to hear you’re a little under the weather but that goes with the territory this time of year, and it’s only going to get worse. Maybe that’s why I’m such an autumn hater.
But re: Parallax, can I just go ahead and say, “My sentiments exactly!!!”? I’ve given the album a couple of spins now and while I know I enjoyed it all the way through with each listen, I can’t really remember anything about it. Well, that’s not compeltely true. Two things I remember quite well were the little keyboard riff in “Te Amo” and the aforementioned “Mona Lisa”. But really, not much else.
Before I continue, let me go ahead and say I’m a huge supporter of the Bradford Cox everythinghedoesever. “Disappearing Ink” was one of my favorite songs of whatever year it was released (2009 perhaps?) and I still get overly giddy when I hear those guitar riffs to this day. I’ve seen Deerhunter live a few times and always really dug it. But there’s just something about Atlas Sound that can’t stick with me. It’s exactly what you said — it has nothing to do with me not liking the songs because, for the most part, I really do like them while I’m listening to them. But once it’s over, that’s kind of it for me and I don’t find myself necessarily wanting to listen to it again and again or even humming any of the melodies, probably because I don’t remember them.
And do we even have to get into Pitchfork favoring certain artists or bands and the almost inevitable BNM’s and 8.5+ ratings that accompany said artists? I think that’s all the more reason that I’m so torn though. I DO think Bradford Cox is a ridiculously talented individual, and I DO like 90% of the music he releases under his various projects. There’s this little piece of me though that thinks that this is exactly the way Cox wants it. He’s definitely not interested in super stardom. I think he’s one of the pure musicians out there, just making as much music as he can for the sake of music. And while my first impression of him was at the 2008 Pitchfork Festival when he made his way on stage to try to awkwardly appease the crowd waiting for a flight-delayed Cut Copy to arrive at the fest on the final evening, my respect and admiration for what he does grows with each new release.
Now this has got me thinking back to Logos, an album that I admittedly did not listen to more than a couple of times, but one that still seemed to have a few breakout tracks that were just really interesting to me. Like “Quick Canal” or “Sheila”, for example. But by and by, I think that’s just the way his music goes. It doesn’t typically slap you over the face. It’s much more subtle than that. It’s usually pretty good, but that subtlety sometimes makes it slightly less memorable. And I think Cox is totally OK with that, and maybe even likes it that way.
Point is, I don’t think you’re taking crazy pills. But can I have some of whatever you’re taking for that nasty cold? It sounds kind of awesome, and I’ve got this Twin Sister album over here just waiting to be listened to. So do we agree to agree on this one?
Te Amo,
Chris
Atlas Sound – “Lightworks”
From: Brandon Hall
To: Chris Atto
Ah, dammit. I was hoping you loved Atlas Sound and Deerhunter and could tell me why I should love them, too.
What bugs me is that I don’t know anybody who would claim Deerhunter or Atlas Sound as their “favorite band,” or even put them in their top five. I’ve never met anyone who’s had one of Cox’s albums on repeat for more than a couple weeks, or says they always go back to Microcastles “this time of the year,” or any of the things people say and do when discussing a band or an album or a song that carries a lot of weight for a person.
And I cringe a little every time I bring up Pitchfork and point to what they said or the score they gave, because it is just one person’s and one publication’s opinion. That said, Pitchfork is too big and too undeniably influential to be disregarded. They are now what Rolling Stone was 40 years ago. In the music world, like it or not, what Pitchfork says matters. And so I think it’s a topic relevant for discussion, especially when they pile accolade after accolade on an artist. Especially when that artist makes a ton of music, none of which is particularly memorable. That’s when I get all in WTF mode. I mean, it’s probably only because of P4K that Parallax is getting the NY Times Magazine treatment we linked to at the top of the page, with a full stream and song by song writeup from Cox. The NY Times? Srsly?
I find it particularly interesting that parallax refers to the displacement or difference in the perceived position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight. The NY Times describes it thusly: parallax is the “optical effect wherein our perceptions of various objects’ relative positions depend on our distance from them — if you drive down a highway, the tree line whizzes past while faraway objects like the sun barely move at all.”
So, maybe to understand Parallax, we need to take into account our distance from it and the angle of our perception. I get the feeling that, when forced to examine Cox’s music from an intellectual perspective, one that takes into account song structure, influences, production, lyrical allusions, genre subversion, etc., a critic might come away with a wealth of goodies to gnaw on. It’s hard to find an article about Cox that doesn’t use the word “genius” or some derivation thereof at least once. Of course, a lot of artists who’ve historically been called “geniuses” have not been very good at making pleasing or approachable art. Gertrude Stein, David Foster Wallace, Frank Zappa, John Berryman, Maya Deren, David Lynch, PT Anderson. The list goes on, obviously. I adore most of these artists, and wouldn’t necessarily count Bradford Cox in their ranks, except to make the point that something can be intellectually satisfying while still being viscerally or accessibly dull. Music theory triptychs can be interesting but there’s not a whole lot that can grab you like three repeating power chords and an anthemic chorus.
From a certain perspective, I can understand how every Bradford Cox release has incited reviewers to declare it a masterpiece, but if we step back and look at these albums from a distance, individually and as a whole, we’re not left with much to hang our hat on, and those Pitchfork scores look ever more inflated. Parallax is no different than any of the others, and I’ll probably forget about it as early as next week.
Also, that Twin Sister album is awesome. And I only had Nyquil. You can pick it up at your local drugstore.
“Gave me bruises after the first time,”
Brandon
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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