Deerhunter Avoid Blogger Comments

11/12/08 4:53pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

There are few more unusual interviewees than Deerhunter and Atlas Sound frontman Bradford Cox. He's about as willing to do a properly structured interview as he is to evenly portion the music he releases.

This year alone, Cox has released a well-received Atlas Sound record (and accidentally leaked another one on the internet) and an acclaimed Deerhunter double LP, Microcastle/Weird Era Cont., which came out at the end of October.

What's more impressive is the difference between the two halves of the new Deerhunter release. The crisp and clean Microcastle addresses some complaints about the group's sophomore album, Cryptograms, being too ambient. Weird Era Cont. stays more true to the group's lo-fi experimental origins.

With that in mind, here are some of Cox's unedited responses as he walked through an Atlanta, Ga. suburb with a cellphone in the middle of the summer.

ChartAttack: Were you conscious of assembling your record in the sort of unusual long songs/short songs/long songs structure?
Bradford Cox: Yeah, but I find that to be a typical rock album. I find it to be a very typical rock album, and that's what I felt like doing.

I didn't want to do anything super-original or challenging. I thought it would be better to concentrate on quality than weirdness or confrontational edginess. I'm not really into that. There were things that I was interested in two years ago that I wasn't really into at the time.

The vibe of the record is a rock record. I wanted to do something a little more American, less European, which is hilarious and ironic because the original concept of Microcastle was really European in design. I mean, we don't even have castles in America, because nothing's that old. So it's like another ironic factor.

But Microcastle, to me, went from being like the micro-structure to being American suburban houses. They started being, to me, like "microcastles," especially the suburbs that I grew up in where it was a pretty wealthy, affluent smalltown vibe. And people would start coming in and building these tiny manors or mansions. Not tiny, they were fucking huge.

"Microcastle" to me just sounds like a smashing together of '90s software imagery and castle, which makes me think about sprawling... and they're always in decay, like in a state of dilapidated abandoned. And the way that they were built was unpredictable.

Cryptograms was fairly heavy on ambient work, where Microcastle has little of that. Why such a drastic switch?
It has some ambient parts. I didn't think it was like, "We're so ambient, look at us." I think it's just more relaxed and less trying to prove anything. I don't think we were trying to prove anything on Cryptograms, though, because I don't think we thought anyone would hear it. I didn't think anybody would ever hear it. We had no clue anybody would give a shit, so we didn't put much thought into individual things.

I mean, we did in terms of the fact that we all love records. We're all music-obsessive-type people and there's certainly a way we wanted it to be so it would suit our aesthetic criteria. But I guess I'm not good at gauging audience reaction. Usually when I think, "Wow, everybody's gonna love this song," everybody thinks it's generic or boring.

I mean, a lot of what I do, I made a lot of tapes during a certain period of my life where I was very clueless as to what the fuck I was doing, and they were just very stoned and random. I usually just find ideas there.

Has any of that stuff ended up on your blog?
No, I save those tapes. Plus, they wouldn't make sense to anybody. It's not like a normal demo. I don't know what people think of demos. I did it with "Spring Hall Convert," I put [the demos] on the blog. I don't really read comments because we get a lot of stupid people. I stopped reading the comments when people started coming on to diss us or diss No Age, really blanket statements like, "You guys have lost your edge," [or] "It was so much cooler when you used those effects pedals."

It's one thing if people have a valid criticism. Like, if someone says, "I used to really like it because you were emotive and cathartic and now you're really detached and cynical," I'd say that's a valid criticism. I would never go on a band that I like's website and say, "Your new record sucks."

First of all, I'm never immediately blown away by records, and if I was, I'd be skeptical of their lasting impact and whether I'd be into it for very long. Because usually, if I don't like something the first time I hear it, it'll grow on me. I find something to like in things.

That's why I have favourite bands that I like and trust, and if they do something totally unexpected, I'm willing to listen to it and go for it. Am I answering any of your questions?

Deerhunter play Toronto's Lee's Palace on Wednesday with Times New Viking and Neighborhood Council, and Vancouver's Richard's On Richards on Nov. 20 with Times New Viking and BARR.