Audio, 20th June
On paper, Deerhunter should be a great band. In fact, the thought of five kids from Atlanta that play ‘ambient punk’ sounded cool enough for me to make a special effort and put on my dancing shoes for the night.
Alas, the reality was a half-full Audio and a very strange evening. Now, I don’t claim to be a charmer but if I was faced with (and I did the headcount) 73 indie kids in a room, then I’d make an effort with what I said and did.
However, when the lead singer and the man responsible for all of this, Bradford Cox, started dancing like an 11-year-old boy the first time he heard Run DMC, then the alarm bells started clanging. Cox himself is frighteningly skinny and draws a striking but odd presence on stage. After claiming Stereolab to be the greatest band ever and making the 73 of us listen to their music, things got underway in earnest but I was already having my doubts.
The band presented a wall of sound that drifted from the great to the less than great to the downright painful. It wasn’t that they weren’t trying, but the whole thing lacked any real purpose as they drifted between songs from their ‘Cryptograms’ album and the soon-to-be-released ‘Microcastle’. Now, I have to confess, there were moments of brilliance, and ‘Heatherwood’ performed live was transformed into a near-masterpiece. But there was way too much filler and not enough bang for anyone’s buck. Cox, meanwhile, tried to save the day with some banter in-between songs, but frankly it just made everyone feel awkward, the band included. He was wasting his efforts like the Osmonds waste water. The real highlight was guitarist Whitney Petty, a recent addition to the band, a former cheerleader and high school friend of Cox, who proved she has far too much game for this band.
Like the film, Deerhunter the band were slow to get going, probably went on for too long and left me seriously depressed. Unlike the film, I suspect no-one will be winning any awards for their involvement in this.
Words by James Fuller
Photograph by Nicholas Jarrett
