Deerhunter, Cryptograms (Kranky)

They sound like (band x) sparring with (band y) after having consuming a bucketful of (drug z)!  Ah, the reviewer’s magic formula.  If only you could get some software to do this for you.  Analyse the music.  Find a couple of similar (although not too similar) bands.  If the music is slow and fuzzy, let drug z = a downer.  If fast and/or fidgety, let drug z = an upper.  Job done.  Meanwhile I kick back on my exclusive Caribbean island, drinking rum cocktails, with scantily-clad wenches thoughtlessly interrupting an otherwise unspoilt panoramic seaview.

[Note that, in order to be eligible for inclusion on this site any review needs to feature at least one reference to the the sea.  I’m actually considering a new category on this site in which I review all my favourite and least favourite bodies of water e.g. The Pacific: “big selfish smug show-off bastard of an ocean”.  Let me know if this is something you want to sea.  I mean see]

You could play that game with Deerhunter, but like what happens every time I attempt to play Monopoly, you’d be playing it all night (does anyone else have that problem?  Am I playing it wrong?).  Cryptograms is such a geometrically unstable thing, all irregular sides and facets.  Mentally unstable, some would suggest, to the point of schizophrenia.  There is the snarly Liars punk-funk of “Lake Somerset” and the Fenneszisms of “White Ink” (think “Circassian” from his Venice).  “Octet Stream” is a lost track from one of Spiritualized’s first two albums, full of nagging circular guitar buzz; “Red Ink” closes the first half of the album with Stars Of The Lid drone.  The shuffly-muffly “Strange Lights” actually reminded me of The Stone Roses, a band I thought I had successfully erased from my brain a goodly number of years ago.

So, as you can see I’m not going down that route.  I don’t know enough about all of them there drugs, for a start (honest, officer, they were just resting in my bloodstream).  I do know that Deerhunter are a fine addition to the increasingly essential Kranky roster, and in Cryptograms they have probably made a record which will get some people a bit too excited for this early in the year.  If ever I meet them in some paradise, tropical or otherwise, rum cocktails are on me.
Listen to tracks on Deerhunter’s Myspace page here.