Beards, Blazers & Glasses: Deerhunter Or A Conversation Between a Hipster Music Critic and His Totally Normal Friend, Joe
Characters:
Hipster Music Critic:Renowned by all four of his friends as a musical sage. Relatively certain that in primitive societies he would’ve been called a shaman.
Hipster Music Critic’s Friend/Joe: Joe is a very normal well-adjusted individual. He likes music with tunes and melodies and intelligible lyrics. Hipster Music Critic thinks Joe is stupid, but once Joe saved Hipster Music Critic from getting beaten up by a tough high school’s women’s field hockey player. They have been friends ever since.
We meet our heroes, surrounded by a thick swarm of bearded, bespectacled, be-blazered individuals and the leggings-clad women who love them.
Joe: Someone needs to give Deerhunter’s lead singer a sandwich. She makes Amy Winehouse look like the fat chick from Wilson Phillips.
Hipster Music Critic: That’s not a woman. That’s a man.
Removing a black fright wig from his head, Deerhunter lead singer Bradford Cox is clad in an ill-fitting floral house dress. He has a pentagram drawn in ink on one of his freakishly thin arms.
Joe: Gadzooks!
It’s a Man, Man!
Hipster Music Critic: Their music is so primal, so erotic, so sexual. It makes me want to go home and crawl into a bathtub filled with petroleum jelly while listening to Bryan Ferry solo records.
Joe: Why is the lead singer deep-throating the microphone?
HM(I)C: You fool, you are mis-understanding his phallic use of imagery, reflecting the epic cycle of self-abuse and nebulous nullification that make his nihilism necessary.
Joe: Nonsense.
Hipster Music Critic: You just don’t get want they’re doing. They’re advanced. No one in the history of time has ever thought to have a martian-looking lead singer in a dress with four guys playing reverb filled with so much shoegaze that you can hardly stop shoegazing long enough to remember that Pitchfork gave them 89 Pitchforks of love.
Joe: What does that mean?
Hipster: I’m not sure yet, they just keep getting better and need more hard Pitchforkings.
Joe: Right…but did you ever stop to consider that it’s much easier to write songs with purposefully indecipherable lyrics, without any regard towards hooks or melodies.
Hipster Music Critic: It must be hard to be so unenlightened. Can’t you appreciate the beauty in their atonal screeches and how long they can drone. This band could just fucking drone me all night long—hard. Can’t you grasp the brilliance of Bradford’s Cox?
Joe: I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.
Deerhunter: They Hate Deer But They LOVE Sheep (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)
HMC: This is art high art, forged in a fiery furnace by Fiery Furnaces who have properly synthesized their concrete Christ-like crystallizations.
Joe: I’m leaving, I can’t watch this anymore. This isn’t brilliant, this isn’t art, this is what would happen if you tried to soundtrack a migraine headache.
HMC: Philistine! But admit it, their performance raised some questions about existentialism, expressionism, empiricism, Dadaism, Momism and several others words ending in -ism that I’m going to have to invent to properly describe this band.
Joe: Well, it does raise one question.
HMC: Which is?
Joe: How many people are gonna’ figure out that these erstwhile emperors aren’t wearing any clothes?
See also Brunette Like Me’s Similarly Hans Christian Anderson-referencing take on Deerhunter’s Live Show. I particularly appreciate her description of the band’s sound as being akin to the “cacophonous wail of a dying chimpanzee.”
See Also Scott Sterling’s kinder and gentler take on the band, proving once again he is a better person than I.
Download: (Admittedly, these songs aren’t nearly as bad as the live show)
MP3: Deerhunter-”Wash Off”
MP3: Deerhunter-”Strange Lights”
Stumble It!
April 18th, 2007 at 12:39 am
LOL, you had to endure that crap!
April 18th, 2007 at 7:51 am
be-blazered, haha classic.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:57 am
OK, lemme try this again.
1) I totally jinxed myself by talking shit about Deerhunter at the show. Now they’ve crept into my brain and are currently playing on my car stereo. Please help me.
2) But like I told Brunette Like Me, I do have a tendency to be something of a sonic masochist. I’m afraid it’s a Detroit thing. All of that pain and suffering, you know.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Yeah, I mean that record isn’t unlistenable or anything. I just don’t get why anyone would optionally want to listen to it. The second half is fine and I could see why someone would throw a track or two on a mixtape, but seriously, just put on that Marco Polo record instead. I’ll re-send it to you if need be.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Umm, hey not to be a parade-rainer-on-er, but the guy’s got Marfan’s Syndrome and that’s what makes him quite skinny and a bit odd looking. Granted, the wig and dress don’t alleviate such, but he’s a seriously compelling frontman, and if you get through to the more-pop second half and the e.p., songs start emerging and it’s lovely stuff. We talked after the set for a bit and he’s really, really nice. Love the blog but you were too quick to release the hounds on this one.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I’m aware that he has Marfan’s Syndrome. I’m also aware that Johnny Appleseed had marfan syndrome too. Do you say me making fun of Johnny Appleseed, I don’t think so.
April 18th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I didn’t know the frontman suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome–that puts a whole new perspective on the guy/band for me..I admire his courage. But not knowing that, you can see why someone would respond negatively–the show is a bit bizarre, and the music doesn’t come off as polished as the digital recordings. Thanx for the info, Ab
April 18th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I’m just kidding by the way about the Marfan Syndrome. Though Johnny Appleseed really did have it.
In all seriousness though, I described him as being freakishly thin, which is true. I really couldn’t care less how he appears but their lead singer makes a point of putting his Marfan’s Syndrome on display by wearing a cutoff dress and accentuating his unorthodox appearance. So its fair game in my book. If dude was bundled up in a hoodie it’d be a different story.