For a dude known for brewing up indie-rock controversy regularly, Bradford Cox somehow manages to be as prolific as any non-T-Pain artist around. As the openly bisexual, Marfan Syndrome-afflicted lead singer of recent Internet darlings Deerhunter, Cox runs the most consistently updated music blog by an actual musician and still finds the time for his pet project, Atlas Sound, who dropped their debut, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, this Tuesday. Ever the modernist, many of the songs have been released in demo form on Cox?s aforementioned blog ? a ballsy and commendable move, considering how many radars Deerhunter?s 2007 album Cryptograms flew under.
All things considered, Cryptograms was maybe the best non-rap album of 2007, a binary trip that began by echoing messily and then morphed into hypno-pop bliss by the denouement. For how disjointed Cryptograms seemed, Let the Blind Lead is equally uniform. The two territories Deerhunter explored ? fuzzy ambience and unfocused lyric-centric pop ? are melded seamlessly through Atlas Sound?s sound. It almost feels like Cox was conscious of Cryptograms? personality disorder, and Let the Blind Lead represents a drugged-out therapy session. The end result is a sonic cohesion, a spacey, haunting aesthetic that marks the album throughout.
Though this consistency will likely be interpreted by some as too much of a good thing, subtle variation exists beneath the surface. ?Recent Bedroom? reminds of the more accessible yet still ghostly tracks from Deerhunter?s 2007 EP Fluorescent Grey; ?After Class? is probably closer to the experimentation and distortion of a Yo La Tengo track. A double-take-inducing dance beat is buried beneath 20,000 leagues of organs and guitars on ?Winter Vacation,? while ?Ready Set Glow? descends into a vaguely religious noise session ? la early Animal Collective. It may all be in the same stylistic ballpark, but the aesthetic on Let the Blind Lead is really both pronounced and dynamic.
A point of great emphasis for Cox is lyrics, an element of songwriting that?s often an afterthought in the present indie-rock climate. Cox?s lyrics, though usually sheathed in an unintelligible veil of distortion not unlike his shoegazing predecessors, are simple and, of course, quite cryptic. Motifs seem to range from contrasting the innocence of childhood with disease, love with death and poetic ? though at times incoherent ? lamentations of uncertain sexuality. It?s fitting that the words Cox chooses to accompany these spiraling jams are as conflicted and alienating as his public persona (along with detailing Deerhunter?s internal strife on his blog and wearing dresses, he has supposedly received fellatio onstage during a performance). The beauty of Let the Blind Lead is that on first impression, the vocals are but a hazy, alien instrument, not unlike My Bloody Valentine, but a little digging reveals the troubled musings of a sometimes polarizing figure.
Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel is not necessarily an improvement on the sometimes perfect Cryptograms, but rather, it is both a refinement of Cox?s vision and a collection of clues about the direction he and Deerhunter could be headed. Though largely sonically homogenous, Atlas Sound has achieved a miniaturized variety pack: the sounds of childhood, sexuality and death delicately squashed together.
4 stars out of 5
