Microcastle, Buried Melodies and Growers
I have been growing fonder and more intimate with the new Deerhunter record, Microcastle. (Well, half of the new record, the other is Weird Era which I haven’t spent as much time with). And it’s brought me back to the notion of ‘growers’. Those records that require a couple of listens before they reveal themselves in their entirety to you.
When I first started listening to and collecting music I was much younger and my record collection was much smaller. And so I naturally assumed that every record I heard would require about three listens before I really understood what was going on and how the different strains of melody might present themselves to the listener, but only under a few patient sessions of sitting still and not getting schpilkas and just absorbing. Most of my affection for Tom Waits records grew out of these sessions. I find his jazzbo stuff to be an acquired taste.
I realize, however, that in the new era of instant digital gratification and musical grazing, even I, someone who fancies himself a recorded music fan, have spent less and less time sitting with the strains of an actual album and letting in unfold. We’ve arrived at this moment naturally. Time is scarce. Information is abundant. It is almost chance and happenstance that might give you the moment you need to understand something in its entirety. So when it does happen it is indeed precious.
The first listen for Microcastle was driving back to DC for the holidays, cruising down the New Jersey turnpike, smoke stacks, factories, Walt Whitman, etc. And I thought the record was fine but my impatience was pushing me to pop in another disc. Maybe something more immediate and obvious like Justice or some kind of dance record.
But this weekend upstate I’ve found the time to discover more about Microcastle and it’s been very pleasant. There is noise and distortion and odd little sonic experiments but the song structures are actually fairly conventional and the melodies are manifest. Bradford Cox’s vocals are not front and center and some of the little guitar and bass flourishes sound a little buried and hazy. Little jewels that you might pass right by if you’re not listening or looking carefully. You kind of have to dig for them.
But once you do they tumble out innocently. You know how some people say they want to be recorded as if they sound underwater? Maybe it’s a little like that. But honestly the real deal is just melody. I am a stickler for it. Beautiful building flourishes of notes clustered together, specific and slight and unpretentious.
My favorite tune is “Nothing Ever Happened” which has about three or four of those same melodic instances. Small pieces of things, particularly towards the end as the dominant motif fades to a grin-inducing final segment of keyboards and ecstatic guitar flourishes.
If there’s one complaint it’s that they don’t seem to have enough of an appreciation for a great huge Albini-esque drum sound and so the snare sounds flat and cheap. Perhaps that’s intentional. But I think about how Dave Grohl sounds on Nevermind and think there may have been a missed opportunity for something immense and powerful, particularly when the rhythms kick in on the song “Microcastle”.
Still, this intimate and tender little record only revealed itself to me after I gave it the time to. And that’s more and more the case that I’m spending less quality time with these songs that these artists have assembled and it’s a shame because there’s a lot to take in. And I think I’m not the only one that is slowly losing his or her ability to sit and explore a singular piece of music before being inundated with the next big thing. Wither growers?
