Revisited: Deerhunter, Turn It Up Faggot
October 20th, 2009 by Gabe Vodicka in Revisited
Remember Deerhunter? Not the Deerhunter, mind you, of Brooklyn Vegan hype or Pitchfork Best New Music fame, and not the Spike Jonze/Trent Reznor-hanging Deerhunter, but Atlanta’s Deerhunter. Remember when they gigged tirelessly, I mean, all the damn time, at the Drunken Unicorn here in town, or at the sweaty, dank Caledonia Lounge over in Athens? Above all, do you remember Turn It Up Faggot? Yeah, the one with a Black Lips’ dick on the cover. Notoriously effusive frontman Bradford Cox would just as soon have you purge it from memory — he’s trashed the band’s grimy, lo-fi debut in interviews, citing, among other apparent pratfalls, the band’s musical immaturity at the time.
While it’s definitely true that the songs on Turn It Up Faggot lack a certain cohesiveness aptly displayed on Deerhunter’s following recordings (say what you will about Cox and his occasionally impish ways, the guy knows how to put an album together), there exists throughout the record a gnarled, raw sort of furor that is nowhere to be found on, say, Cryptograms. Chalk it up to artistic evolution, if you will — obviously, a band must grow, mature, change; if not, you’re Kiss. With all the best groups, though, there’s usually a good deal of intrigue, if not all-out enjoyment, to be found by examining and absorbing their earliest work. In this case, TIUF, ugly scabs and all, contains some revelatory stuff.
Its scratchy, half-formed songs seem culled from an all-night listening session of Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex or the vaunted No New York compilation. One-note, perhaps, but it’s not a bad note. Mostly, it calls to mind those early Deerhunter shows — big, violent, noisy — and maybe that’s why it’s an enjoyable listen. Put it on loud enough, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re in a dark, moldy basement, rogue limbs and shitty keg beer splashing all ’round your fragile little face. But by the time album closer “Death Drag” loosens its lecherous grip on your brain, you’re right back where you were, and Deerhunter is in fact a whole other animal these days. And while homeboy’s certainly got the right to hate on his own LP, the crux of the matter is that it’s actually — gasp — pretty good.
October 20th, 2009 at 11:40 am
thank god – another deerhunter article.
it’s been a full week since the last deerhunter or black lips mention in CL, so i was jonesing for SOME sort of write up on one of atlanta’s shittiest/most overhyped bands, even if it is about an album that came out years ago.
seriously, does the music section at CL have an editor anymore?
perhaps the new CL management should think about filling an actual NEED in atlanta, rather than allowing the same articles to get regurgitated every week.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
This reminds me of Pavlov’s Conditioning experiment, only instead of a dog salivating whenever he hears a bell ring, we have a halfwit firing off a pissy comment whenever he reads about a successful local band. Excellent work CL.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Yo wesley, you too can contribute to Crib Notes — and not just in the comments section. Holla at me: http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/want_to_contribute_to_our_blogs/Page?oid=910648
That’s how Gabe Vodicka’s Deerhunter review got posted.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
rodney, if i had any writing ability, i would. i don’t even know when to capitalize.
dan, don’t forget the last stage – a quarter wit trying his best to fire off a witty insult over the internet. keep working on it, sir.