Music Box | Deerhunter

Mike Newmark Arts Editor

Deerhunter
Cryptograms
[Kranky; 2007]

Maybe this will damage my credibility as a music journalist, but I believe that the best music can’t be described in words. I admire artists who have been able to elevate their music above language, and the albums most dear to me have rendered me dumb and hopeless to explain their power.

I was in no way prepared for Deerhunter’s staggering, brain-melting Cryptograms, not even slightly. I knew a bit about Deerhunter before taking the plunge: that they hailed from the indie rock no-man’s-land of Atlanta, that they’ve opened for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and that they released an inconsequential dance-punk record that few people cared about. What I didn’t know was that they carried with them a tempestuous history involving psychological atrophy, overmedication and the death of their original bassist. Such distressing circumstances clearly inform Cryptograms, but they don’t account for how a rock record can sound like nothing else on this planet, or how something so conceptually aversive can also be unspeakably beautiful, or how listening to it for the hundredth time still leaves me stunned and speechless in its tracks.

The first half of Cryptograms was recorded in one day under extreme duress, after the band tried and failed several times to get anything worthwhile on tape. Panic attacks and breakdowns were common during these sessions, but if the band members had to strain themselves to the brink of self-destruction to achieve the album’s epic sprawl, then so be it. After a nervy introduction, the oblique title track blazes onto the scene with invigorating force, boasting a lean guitar-bass interaction that turns dance-punk on its silly, ironic head. Next comes “White In,” which is just strummed guitar chords running through a delay. It takes guts to place such a formless track alongside the tightly constructed “Cryptograms,” but Deerhunter inexplicably turn the combination to gold, as though the two songs were an unlikely yin and yang.

The torture chamber environment of “Lake Somerset” is as caustic and creeped-out as Slint’s “Good Morning, Captain,” making explicit references to the band’s shaky psychological state. The frightened swirl of “Providence” is a lead-in to “Octet,” a psychedelic motorik workout that recalls Can in the first minutes, but becomes—paradoxically—more immediate and more spiritual. “Octet” eventually deliquesces into “Red Ink,” a pool of luxuriant bells and soft synth tones. The song ends, the tape spins off the reel, the musicians pack up and head home, presumably with their own overwhelming music still ringing in their heads.

Cryptograms’s second half was recorded several months later, after everyone had been able to heal. And indeed, there is a marked difference in tone between the two sides. The band actually sounds happy here, but happy in the disoriented sense, as though their old music had been administered a great number of painkillers and antidepressants. From “Red Ink,” Deerhunter jumps into a trio of washed-out pop songs that begin with the telling words “So I woke up.” My favorite, the up-tempo “Hazel St.,” feels like a paean to youth, with Bradford Cox’s gentle vocals buried beneath jangly guitar melodies that radiate with childlike wonderment. Though “Tape Hiss Orchid” is only a minute-long ambient loop with a bit of a crackle, it’s a brilliant distillation of Deerhunter’s newfound comfort that’s easy to get lost in.

The final track, “Heatherwood,” begins, and suddenly we’re faced with a conflict. Sonically and conceptually, “Heatherwood” lies between “Cryptograms” and “Hazel St.”; the sun that shone on the album’s second half has been overtaken by clouds and all the shimmering surfaces have been leached away. “Heatherwood” doesn’t let us off the hook; how dare we assume that these artists have been cured when the past obviously leaves an indelible stamp on the present. When the disc ends, we are left in the same dumbfounded place we started. Luckily, God created the repeat button.

Cryptograms winds its way through disparate genres like post-punk, bliss-pop and ambient techno, but to call the album diverse would be missing the point. The seemingly schizophrenic sequencing actually follows an eerily predetermined narrative arc unlike any we’ve experienced. Over the course of 12 songs, we are seized by the throat, thrown mercilessly into murky woods, shot at through the trees, lifted up to the sky and thrashed around, lowered back to Earth in an amniotic dream and woken up in a ditch to contemplate it all. It’s a journey that few would elect to take, but one that would profoundly affect us all.

I wrote this review in the name of journalistic integrity and my mean recommending streak, but my words can’t begin to explain how Cryptograms accomplishes as much as it does. The psychological context certainly helps, but I have psychology textbooks in my room that are far less interesting than this. I’ve listened to Cryptograms over and over, and no matter how many times I hear it, no matter how many press photos I see of the band smiling goofily, no matter how long I stare at the freaky cover art, and no matter how many chances I may have to pick Bradford Cox’s brain, I’ll never know Deerhunter or their masterpiece for certain. Great art asks questions. The enjoyment I get from Cryptograms comes from knowing that I’ll never find the answers.