In Dennis Cooper's 1987 novel Closer, young George Miles gets totally fucked. Poor kid probably just wants to be loved-- either that or trip out on acid and live in Disneyland, whichever is more realistic-- but he falls prey to charlatans of all stripes. Old-fart perverts deface his flesh with loveless sexual violence. "Do you know what's inside that cute body of yours?" one asks, then comes brutally close to exposing the answers.
Atlanta five-piece Deerhunter, who hailed Cooper as a primary influence in a recent Dusted feature, show their guts admirably on this vast, visceral second album. Arranged in chronological sequence from two distinct recording sessions, Cryptograms is alternately murky and ethereal, amorphous and incisive, shot through with Sonic Youth guitar squall, Spacemen 3's blissful hymns, the morbidly introspective drum sounds of early Factory Records productions, and the abstract sonic richness of Harold Budd's collaborations with Brian Eno.
The album's willfully cryptic first half opens with a psych-out, both musically and mentally. Out of a nature scene's tranquility, a foreboding bassline and bird-calling keyboards summon singer Bradford Cox, who kicks off the galvanizing title track with a declaration of regret: "My greatest fear/ I fantasized/ The days were long/ The weeks flew by/ Before I knew/ I was awake/ My days were through/ It was too... late." As the song careens toward an increasingly chaotic climax, Cox finds his senses deteriorating until the final, indefinite repetition of the closing mantra: "There was no sound." Underpinned by Josh Fauver's primal bass and Moses Archuleta's paranoid drums, the similarly bleak "Lake Somerset" is a scream-saturated stomper with largely obscured lyrics about murder and pissing. No wonder Cox endured daily panic attacks throughout its recording.
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Deerhunter aren't content just to put their least welcoming side forward. Cryptograms also intersperses its loosely structured songs with a handful of extended, largely instrumental ambient passages. Guitarists Colin Mee and Lockett Pundt know their delay pedals-- the drifting chords on "White Ink" ring with the same washed-out analog shimmer that made Flying Saucer Attack's Further so powerfully nostalgic, gradually filling in with low end as keyboards and vocal effects add layers of texture off in the distance. The dream-like "Providence", written on a Rhode Island tour stop with Lightning Bolt, sounds at once radiant and terrified. "Octet" finds Cox's cries muffled behind the maelstrom, until the drums and bass lock together in the second half, erupting in a static-drenched propulsion that doesn't let up until a busy-signal organ tone segues into the droning, bell-swathed "Red Ink". The album's first half concludes with the tape to which the band recorded literally spinning off its reel.