Deerhunter – review

You know that THX ad, designed to showcase the depth and complexity of sound at the start of DVDs – the volume distorting and taking on new cadences with each passing second? That's American indie rock band Deerhunter in Brisbane tonight.

Music critics love Deerhunter. It's not difficult to understand why. They're smart. They write traditional indie rock but aren't scared of experimentation. They embrace the different, the alien.

Their sixth album, 2013's Monomania – heralded as a return to "basics" – matches wide-eyed 70s rock-style adventurism to songs that have been compared to Ramones, Breeders, Silversun Pickups and the Strokes (among dozens of other wildly disparate bands). It's direct, but doesn't dumb down.

Their frontman Bradford Cox is an intelligent man, lanky and lazily decorous, a musical chameleon who draws on any amount of charismatic role-models – David Bowie and Patrick Wolf being two obvious references – a singer who revels in pushing boundaries of what indie rock should and shouldn't do. When it comes to indie rock, your Deerhunter are a superior model (apparently). The problem is, it feels like they've started believing their own press.

On tonight's showing, Deerhunter can't resist showing off. Nothing wrong with that, of course. They're a rock band. But where are the new album's much-vaunted "beer muscles"? Being present at the decidedly un-stadium-like Zoo tonight is like witnessing a secret Radiohead give unapologetic vent to their stadium rock leanings: all bombast and multifarious guitar textures and flashing strobes and noise signifying absolutely nothing.

Well. Almost.

You know that wind tunnel sound Hawkwind used to such effect on the garage/psych/hippie 70s standard Silver Machine? That's what two-thirds of tonight's set is like, only without the surging, monstrous riff charging in. You know all those bits Sonic Youth used to play in between their songs … ? You got it. Ten minutes in and you're thinking, very impressive, love the singer's pose and the light show and the nod towards Christmas with the plucked-out Jingle Bells riff, but when are they going to play a bloody song?

It isn't till the mournful, inward-turned Don't Cry (taken from the previous album, 2010's Halcyon Digest) starts that Deerhunter finally take off – lifted by the force of their songwriting ability away from the smoke and mirrors, the noise confusion. Even so, it's hard to detect the passion. On record, it sounds like a gentle Breeders. Live, it's like an iPhone-waving U2.

Likewise, 2013 single THM is stunning – a simple thudding repetitive drumbeat played out beneath Wild Beasts-style guitar arpeggios and a plaintive vocal. Tonight, it's still great – the set's highlight – but submerged beneath the bluster and affectation. Nothing wrong with affectation, of course (just ask David Bowie) but this seems all smoke and little substance, all look-at-us we-can-play-guitar showing-off and little concern for the songs themselves.

Straight after THM comes the set's nadir, the meandering exercise in guitar atmospherics Rainwater Cassette Exchange – lasting for what seems like an eternity – backed with Nothing Ever Happened, which ends with a segue into Patti Smith's impassioned elegy for youth, Horses. Cox screams the main vocal over and over like Tarzan beating his chest to impress us, his Jane.

"HORSES! HORSES! HORSES! HORSES!"

It doesn't work.