Don’t expect to find Deerhunter exactly where you left them. Last time we saw the band, they had twisted and contorted into the tightly-wound garage-rock of ‘Monomania’, where their clever melodies were accompanied by a fresh layer of grit. Two years later, ‘Fading Frontier’ occupies an entirely different place.
Where that album buzzed with confrontational energy, this one slowly unfurls in an almost contented haze. Prior to its release, Bradford Cox released a board of influences that ranged from Pedro Almodóvar films to ‘souless new car smell’, Tom Petty and ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’-era R.E.M. At its centre, though, was his dog, Faulkner, and the car accident that put him into a deep depression last year, while also reshaping his ideas of home and security.
As much as the title points to a finite future, or a change in expectations and desires, it also seems to apply in a more optimistic sense to the recent past. This is an album by Bradford Cox, dog owner and home-maker, and it’s a lilting, sometimes laconic trip through some of the most straightforwardly engaging songs to emerge under the Deerhunter name.
Living My Life, for example, is open and relatively easy to read. This is Cox on fresh ground, but where its lyrics could be read as stark and self-aware, they are instead warm and inviting. “I’m off the grid, I’m out of range,” he sings. The song's video, meanwhile, went as far as to include Faulkner.
The beauty of Deerhunter as a unit, though, has always been their ability to make the strange, beguiling or frightening appear vital and elemental. Here ideas of domesticity, health and ageing are moulded and warped in the same manner. Musically, the band play off one another with subtlety and confidence, their ease and familiarity with one another shining through.
All The Same, the album’s opener, drifts into a radio-ready chorus like it's the easiest thing in the world, while Snakeskin pops and whirrs over its percussive base before rolling out another infectious guitar lick. At its close it threatens to unravel into noise, but never loses its grip.
A couple of songs best illustrate the give and take at work throughout the record. The first, Take Care, is a low-lit work of beauty, where Cox’s ballad is reimagined by producer Ben Allen, back on board after working on ‘Halcyon Digest’, and Broadcast’s James Cargill, who between them give it a subtle electronic edge and help situate it as the album’s centrepiece.
Ad Astra, Lockett Pundt’s contribution, pulls off a similar trick but ends up pointing in a new direction. Its glitchy electronics seem set to disintegrate altogether, only for its low-key funk bassline to slink back into the frame. For just a moment, Deerhunter look ready to disappear into a synth rabbit hole.
Carrion, the closer, is traditional in comparison, but also the album’s most emotionally conflicted statement. “Carry on, carry on. I will stay strong,” Cox sings. Moments later, he pleads: “What’s wrong with me?”
It’s strange to think of a Deerhunter album as reassuring, but that’s what ‘Fading Frontier’ eventually becomes. There are twists, things left unsaid and moments of uncertainty, but they swirl through songs of rare melodic strength and illustrate another new side to a band from whom we have come to expect the unexpected.
Deerhunter Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Fri October 30 2015 - HOVE ALL Saints Church
Sat October 31 2015 - LIVERPOOL Camp And Furnace
Sun November 01 2015 - DUBLIN Button Factory
Tue November 03 2015 - GLASGOW SWG3
Wed November 04 2015 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Fri November 06 2015 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
Sat November 07 2015 - LONDON O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
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