Words: Vincent Valentino

There is a difference between enjoying and loving a band.

Enjoying the music isn’t necessarily a skin deep interaction, don’t get me wrong. When you hear something that harmonizes with you in whatever way, it’s like meeting a new friend. You listen to the music again and again, you create memories and associations with the hooks and the harmonies. But songs and albums are snapshots of a band at a particular moment in time. Loving a band is when you find yourself coming back time and again to a particular album, a particular song.

Inevitably, all musicians need to write new music. And for us the fans, we don’t always get a taste of the changes that the band goes through over time.So when one of your favorite bands of all time puts out a new album and it’s a departure,it can be jarring. It can feel like a friend has changed, sold out, got a 9 to 5, a girlfriend you don’t really like all that much, and a sudden interest in EDM.

So when a band puts out an album, it’s as much a foray into artistry as it is catching up with an old friend.

What are you up to?
How’s that girl?
Do you still talk to Josh?
I heard about your accident.

So when I’m riding back from Athens, OH and I throw on the new Deerhunter album, Fading Frontier, my first thought is curiosity. What’s the band got in store? What have the been up to? How have you been? It turns out, they’re doing quite well, though things have been a tad nuts recently.

Lead-singer Bradford Cox was struck by a car last December, leaving him nearly immobilized and in “incredible pain”. (https://pitchfork.com/news/57723-bradford-cox-hospitalized-after-being-hit-by-car/) In the interviews leading up to Fading Frontier’s release, Cox said that the accident provided him with a perspective-altering jolt and any avid Deerhunter fan can tell from the opening moments of the new album.

From the bright organ humming throughout album opener “All the Same” to the atmospheric synths and electronic drums on “Living My Life”, Fading Frontier is the happiest, lushest sounding Deerhunter album to date. The band experiments with sonic textures that are rounded and warm, synths that at times can be reminiscent of the Blade Runner soundtrack (see “Ad Astra”), yet Cox and company are still holding onto their shimmering guitars and their natural drum kits. Fading Frontier doesn’t veer between two poles of real instrumentation vs. electronic instrumentation. Instead, Deerhunter has peppered both throughout, staying within a remarkable balance of effected and natural instrumentation so that Fading Frontier feels both familiar and fresh. At the same time, Deerhunter’s rhythm section has never felt so present as they do on Fading Frontier. Drummer Moses Archuleta seems right at home on the newly used electronic kit, and though he’s always been a rather minimalist percussionist, he shows the most flair he’s ever shown playing with Deerhunter on the album. New bassist Josh McKay, whose only been apart of the band since 2013’s Monomania, is in many ways, exactly what Deerhunter needed: a smart bassist who did more than hit root notes, but stayed deep within the garage rock pocket that Deerhunter originated from.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCVWrqxyt3Y[/youtube]

This is Deerhunter at their best, experimenting with new ideas and leaning on their rhythm section, while Cox’s lyrics are at their most meaningful: finding peace in oneself and the world. If anything sums up his new life mentality, it’s probably the third verse in “Living My Life”:

Will you tell me when you find out,
How to recover the lost years?
I’ve spent all of my time out here,
Chasing the fading frontier.

Deerhunter finds themselves at home, after searching for their own edge, searching for the frontier of their own music. They come back different but the same. It’s instantly recognizable as a Deerhunter album, but it’s aged and it’s changed, and it’s so good to see a dear friend back from a long strange trip with so much to think about and so much to say.

Track Highlights:
“Living My Life”, “Snakeskin”, “Duplex Planet”, “Ad Astra”, “Breaker”