Deerhunter

Since 2001 · United States

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Halcyon Digest (2010)

Bradford Cox's songwriting operates through deliberate obscurity — lyrics that feel confessional but resist paraphrase, images that accumulate emotional charge without resolving into narrative — and the production matches that ambiguity with arrangements that blur the line between retro and contemporary. 'Helicopter' sounds like it was recorded in 1966 and 2010 simultaneously; 'He Would Have Laughed' is a tribute to Jay Reatard that operates as elegy and celebration at once. It established Cox as one of the most distinctly literary lyricists in contemporary indie rock.

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Deerhunter

Halcyon Digest · 2010

Bradford Cox is, on the available evidence, constitutionally incapable of making the same record twice — or even the same kind of record twice — while remaining immediately identifiable as himself. Deerhunter's catalog moves from the near-noise of Cryptograms (2007) to the melodic sunshine of Halcyon Digest (2010), through the garage-flavored detours of Monomania (2013) and the elegant songwriting of Fading Frontier (2015), without any of it feeling like a plan.

What holds it together is Cox's particular relationship with melody — he writes hooks that feel precarious, as if the song might collapse before it reaches the chorus, and then doesn't collapse. The guitar work, shared with Lockett Pundt, finds space between shoegaze's wall-of-sound and post-punk's restraint. Halcyon Digest in particular — "Coronado," "Revival," "Desire Lines" — is one of the decade's best albums precisely because it sounds nothing like what it would take to make it, which is an unusual achievement in the overly self-conscious world of indie guitar.