Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange

by Mark Rowland

published: 8 / 6 / 2009

Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange

Label: 4AD
Format: CD

Dynamic and ethereal latest EP from prolific Atlanta-based lo-fi band Deerhunter

Review

The boys of Deerhunter are incredibly prolific, releasing two excellent records last year, ‘Microcastle’ and the ‘bonus’ ‘Weird Era Cont'. Add to that the sheer number of great singles put up on their blog for free by singer Bradford Cox in his Atlas Sound guise. The official Atlas Sound album, ‘Let the Blind Lead Those who See but Cannot Feel’, was also released last year, with another one forthcoming, and now the band have released the ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’ EP, with a limited run of cassette copies being sold at their shows, and a somewhat less limited digital and CD release available everywhere else. The sound of ‘Rainwater…’ essentially follows the ‘Microcastle’ sound – at once dynamic and ethereal, with swirling shoegaze influences, driving rhythms and surfy guitar twang, but it is a fuzzier, lo-fi version of that sound, perhaps a deliberate reflection of the underground, word-of-mouth 1980s cassette culture they are paying homage to. The title track certainly occupies the surfier end of their sound - with its chiming guitars, woozy reverb and a rhythm that shifts between gentle swing and crunchy stomp. It sort of sounds like the Beach Boys covering My Bloody Valentine. ‘Disappearing Ink’ is rockier, a distorted bass propelling the song forward while guitars clang and shimmer around it. In the centre of it all, Cox’s vocals float above it lazily, both dreamy and desperate at the same time. ‘Famous Last Words’ is a mid-paced fuzzy march with a theremin line hovering eerily above the mix. ‘Game of Diamonds’ is an acoustic strum along that could have been recorded on a California beach one balmy evening (never mind the fact that the band are from Atlanta, Georgia), while closer ‘Circulation’, a spacey stomp all from beginning to end, is split in two halves, with vocal harmonies at one end, and a cut up collage of sound bites at the other – another feature of the 80s lo-fi scene’s cassette culture.