As a warm up for their performance at the Matt Groening curated ATP, Deerhunter made a welcome return to the London live circuit. With a set that borrowed heavily from 2008’s ‘Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.’ the band, led by the ever charismatic Bradford Cox, quickly found their stride in front of the packed crowd. Opening with ‘Cover Me (Slowly)’ into ‘Agoraphobia’ at first it seemed they were to follow the ATP tradition and play a beloved album in its entirety, however they broke the tracklist of ‘Microcastle’ with the title track of 2009’s ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’.
The band were in good spirits throughout, with Cox breaking the ice with jokes about the General Election. According to the singer “Britain made better music under Thatcher”, while it’s unclear if the impending hung government will improve British bands – its clear Deerhunter are on fine form. A clutch of new songs were also debuted, the highlight being ‘Helicopter’. However the loudest applause seemed to be reserved for ‘Nothing Ever Happened’, with Josh Fauver’s bassline causing reverberations throughout the crowd.
Click on the link below for more pictures from the show.
All Is Love is the lead single taken from the soundtrack to the forthcoming Spike Jonze film ‘Where The Wild Things Are’. More commonly known for fronting the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Karen O has stepped outside of her comfort zone, to craft an album that compliments the spirit of the film perfectly. ‘All Is Love’ features contributions from several notable musicians – include fellow YYY’s Nick Zinner and Brian Chase as well as Deerhunter/Atlas Sound front-man Bradford Cox.
Through the use of a Children’s Choir on backing vocals, the track encapsulates the childlike innocence of Jonze’s film and proves that film soundtracks should never comprise of thoughtless backing songs.
It was only a matter of time until these two heroes of the blogosphere would join forces. And this is it, Deerhunter’s lead singer Bradford Cox and Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear, the most renowned member of Animal Collective, have teamed up to create one of the best songs we have heard this year.
“Walkabout” is the first taster of Cox’s second album under his Atlas Sound moniker, Logos, to be released next October. It was created while the two musicians’ respective bands were touring Europe together and came across the track “What I Am Going To Do” by cult sixties Santa Barbara garage/folk-rock band, The Dovers. They decided to sample it, and upon that they have built up this joyful tune; much in the sunny, psychedelic manner of Panda Bear’s acclaimed solo album, “Person’s Pitch”.
