Bradford Cox’s Poop Blog

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In the interest of making up for the impressive malaise with which SeizureChicken treats new music by established indie bands, here’s a handful of new singles from established indie bands.

Deerhunter, “Revival”

As usual with Deerhunter’s best work, the juxtaposition between the vibrant, warm and welcoming textures of the band’s instruments and the melancholy of Cox’s voxes is the song’s main selling point – this time, there’s the added benefit of the song’s brevity (including an awesome coda saved for the song’s final thirty seconds), which harnesses the band’s normally blissful, swooning and tentacular* energy into a super-condensed two-minute snack. This song makes me think that Bradford Cox has started listening to the Kinks, which is something that I think I dreamed of writing way back when Bradford Cox was listening to Sonic Youth and blogging about his poops, or pooping on his blogs, or whatever.

* $10 per adjective

The Books, “Chain of Missing Links”

In the most bookworm-y and eclectic way possible, “Chain of Missing Links” swings, like Ratatat’s dad who moonlights as an English professor at UCLA, or Flying Lotus’s much whiter brother or even, gasp whoa sigh, some sort of long-lost agnostic cousin of the nihilistic Richard D. James Album-era Aphex Twin. The Books manipulate the line between “weirdness” and “originality” unlike any other band today (admittedly, I’m glad that they’re back), but instead of trying to defend experimental music in general, just listen to the samples in this song – the meticulous placement and deployment of each, the staggering arsenal of samples at work, and the uniquely beautiful absurdity of the end product – and recognize The Books for being nothing if not craftsmen of an impressive degree.

Interpol, “Barricade”

“Barricade” has a pretty great bridge, an okay verse or two, and a terrible chorus – but these terms are all relative. “Pretty great,” as far as Interpol goes. “Okay,” for Interpol. It’s strange that a band that can be described entirely in self-referential terms can still sound so without identity, so reluctant to take chances – “Barricade” tries but struggles to shake the remnants of the sort-of success of Our Love to Admire, an album that cemented the band commercially but not critically (thereby totally fucking turning the tables on indie-dudes who loved this band in its developmental years). Then again, there’s no easier path to commercial success/critical disdain than the one that involves beating a dead horse.

Panda Bear, “Slow Motion”

I think it’d be really cool if Panda Bear decided to just fuck with people and release something that didn’t sound like Panda Bear – you know, a nice acoustic guitar song about fucking, or a jingle for a toothpaste commercial. “Slow Motion” is neither of these songs, but what it is is (isn’t it though) another song by Panda Bear. This one has a dub-infused two-chord loop and unintelligible vocals in full two-or-three part harmony that sound like they’re bouncing around at the bottom of a well. There are some cool melting handclaps that could be misconstrued as finger-snaps. Hypnotic like house, relaxing like reggae, relentlessly happy like sunshine pop. Not very exciting.