I Shit Music

I’ve fallen in love with the new short video released today by Todd Cole and Rodarte, The Curve of Forgotten Things. Featuring Elle Fanning and a clever way to showcase fashion, the 8 minute surrealist piece has her cycling through a house in a series of different dreamlike transitions, all set to an incredibly beautiful ambient soundtrack by Deerhunter. Definitely got a very Sigur Ros vibe to it, but either way the music goes elegantly with the video – when the drums kick in at the 6 minute park I get total goosebumps. Watch it here for the next week, then I think it disappears:

Elle Fanning: Rodarte’s Muse on Nowness.com.

And just in case it does, here’s a killer vid of good ole’ Stevie Nicks crushing it back in the day. Only because I’d hate to put off the readers who didn’t appreciate the randomness of my Nicks bashing in my last post, so here’s random redemption points. She really does kill it here, you can see Lyndsey Buckingham loving it – probably because they were still banging hard in the dressing  room every night with a pile of disheveled dashikis left in their wake.

So yeah, yeah, I know – Halcyon Digest came out last September, but now that everybody’s year-end best-of lists have been fully digested, I can’t help but comment on how over-rated this album is. Pitchfork had it at #3, Spin at #2, random tail-grabbers had the nerve to put it at #1. First things first, I friggin’ love Bradford Cox, and I think his oddly stretched out body has one of the most intriguing musical minds of our modern era. But God, I hope he never makes another album like this ever again.

While Deerhunter has been constantly evolving into a more fearsome embrace of the post-trance, organic drift-off vibe, Halcyon has gone one step too deep into some of the most incredibly boring music ever made. Honestly, if you can put this on your headphones any time after 9 p.m. without falling asleep, then I owe you a nickel.

Now admittingly, I had it at #28 on my personal top 40 list, but my real gripe isn’t with the album but with the unforseen embrace of it. What it seems to me has happened is that a whole shitload of people completely missed out on 2008′s Microcastle releases. So they had seen the Deerhunter name on other people’s blog and best-of lists back then, and had initially said “Fuck whatever band names itself after that creepy movie.” But then a year or so later, they finally heard it and were like “Oh shit, now I get it. I’m such a late-bloom new-release noob.” So then when Halcyon Digest came out, these same people said, “Oh sweet, now I can be one of the hip in-the-know peeps by putting this on my best-of list.” However, this act was done in complete disregard to the actual inert quality of the album, which pales in comparison to may of the other great releases form last year. Sure, it’s cool , it’s mellow, it’s rough – it’s good even. But it doesn’t belong in anyone’s top 10.

So despite it being both a critical success and a really cool album, the real aclaim is due more to hipster class wars than actual music. And that unatural out cycle of love unfortunately only leaves me with more disdain for the actual product. Sorry Bradford, not your fault I guess. Just get back to the shoegaze bud, ok?

If you’re completely unaware of Deerhunter then start with the 2008 bonus disc Weird Era Continued, then hit Microcastle, then 2007′s Cryptograms, then the new one, then the old one. Here’s my favorite cut off Weird Era, “Dot Gain” which actually has Lockett Pundt on vocals rather than Bradford.