deerhunter - agoraphobia

cryptograms was a fascinating record, but deerhunter's microcastle, just blows it out of the water. when nick gave me the record, he told me he wanted 'agoraphobia' to be played on his retrospective video... it's that good.

remember that hippie girl in high school, who would always request grateful dead songs at the dances? you know, the one who would bust out the 60's snorkel and throw scarves around in faux slow mo to half the tempo? deerhunter has apparently channeled that ora on microcastle; it's the beach boys without the beach. with heavily saturated guitars and bradford cox's dreamy vocals, 'agoraphobia' is layered comparably to the six socks the hippie girl wore to make rainbows dance around her ankles. i'm puzzled as to how the song sounds so spotlessly clean in production, even though i'm positive i hear a tremolo'ed guitar in the back. when i play it back, i can never actually find the guitar; maybe it's only present in spirit, not totally unlike the girl from high school. i love the placating nature of the song despite the fact that i believe cox is asking to be thrown in jail in a solitary confinement chamber... so that's where all the hippies go?

and if the song wasn't erie enough, then they had to go and do a video with slow motion tango dancers?