Atlas Sound
Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel

THE REVIEW

Bradford Cox, in hindsight, can be regarded as one of the last great interpreters of whimsical Pop music of the past decade, comparable to perpetually moving personas like Phil Elverum or Jamie Stewart. Unlike the latter two, however, the figurehead of the Deerhunter brand is considered more grounded, the most human character. And he represents the most decadent, sensitive, and indigenous side of humanity.

Separating the musical journey of "Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel" from the inner journey of the teenage Cox, and then as a man, is practically impossible, starting with the intimate, bedroom nature of this work. A digital sequencer (Ableton Live), a guitar, a drum set. The first imprint under the Atlas Sound moniker is nothing but the sublimation of the parts that marked his musical journey, both before and after: 4AD-inspired layers, where the walls of guitar sound are supplanted by gentle and dreamy drones or electronic textures that can evoke both Stereolab and Sascha Ring's "Duplex" or the even dreamier "Walls". Or more poetically, one might think of the choral and hyper-saturated arabesques of the Spectorian girl groups, brought into the era of digital maximalization. Skewed songs, always on tiptoes, sleepy and sedated. Introspection without any soothing solution, perhaps exorcizing instead. It’s in that context that monuments of escapism are to be considered, via Dream Pop, of "Bite Marks" or the droning isolationism of the title track and "A Ghost Story". A ghost, that of the young Cox, that takes charge of every episode present here.

What makes this work great is the ability to narrate, narrating oneself, on multiple levels of reading, a kind of literary encapsulation typical of the best pens in pop(ular) music of the last decade, without wanting to evoke Kurt Cobain. Like the latter, however, in Atlas Sound the best moments turn out to be those unmistakably soaked in Pop and more "regular" constructs, like the magnificent ballad "Ativan" or the excellent opening pair "Recent Bedroom"/"River Card". The resolution of the existential dilemma in this work finds comfort in the dormant finale, in the catatonic resolution of an oneironaut, destabilized by his own monsters and, no, the sleep of reason in this case absolutely does not count.

From here on, Deerhunter and Atlas Sound will become two sides of the same coin, encroaching upon each other, without interruption, dimming the ungrammatical constructions in favor of an increasingly clear and purely song-oriented descriptive building capacity, able to speak about itself, with every available language - whether it be guitar or piano Pop, bedroom or post-Gaze, destabilizing or soothing - without metatextual stratagems, speaking, or rather whispering, directly to the listener's ear.