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Reviews

Deerhunter, ‘Halcyon Digest’ (4AD)

8
SPIN Rating: 8 of 10
Release Date: September 28, 2010
Label: 4AD

When a skeletal drum-machine beat sputters to life on opener “Earthquake,” Deerhunter’s third album threatens to be their most threadbare yet, but then a dreamy guitar floods the senses. Like frontman Bradford Cox’s solo records as Atlas Sound, Halcyon Digest exists mainly as another iteration of his shifting id, deeply plumbing memories real and imagined with a sound by turns spare and sumptuous. On the pensive “Basement Scene” and sublime centerpiece “Desire Lines” (actually written by guitarist Lockett Pundt), Deerhunter couples the Everly Brothers’ drawling croon with ’90s Sonic Youth surge, making for a blissed-out yet bittersweet reverie.