Live Review

Deerhunter – Andrews Lane

• 3rd Jun 2009

The haircuts in the crowd tonight indicate that Deerhunter are “in” for 2009.

And why not, last year’s ‘Microcastle’ saw them push on from their more experimental early work, it was an album filled to the brim with cracking indie-pop, psychedelia and shoegaze, in fact one of the best releases of 2008. There’s no reason why they couldn’t be the “next big thing”, their material’s improving with every release and in Bradford Cox they have a lead man who carries himself in the aloof manner of someone destined to be a voice for disaffected youth. In fairness though tonight the singer comes across as a fairly humble sort of bloke, certainly not the sort to crave Kings of Leon-sized stadium-rock sell-out status.

Anyway, enough about Deerhunter’s future prospects, are they any use now? Well things get going with a track from their new EP ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’ and while it sounds like it may well be a damn fine song the muddy sound quality makes it impossible to tell for certain, the bass is way too prominent and pretty much drowns out the rest of the band. Whether this is the effect the band are going for or not is anyone’s guess but this is how they sound for the remainder of the night making it difficult to gauge how well, or poorly, they perform.

When the sound is clearer it’s easy to see that the material holds up really well in the live setting, losing none of its ethereal quality. The dreamy 60’s pop of ‘Agorophobia’ and the groove driven ‘Never Stops’ flaunt an effortless cool. On ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ the band get to let their hair down, it’s a top tune culminating in a brilliant mess of squalling fuzzy guitars and feedback. At times the noise levels are reminiscent of a My Bloody Valentine show, that is to say capable of causing ear-bleed.

On stage Deerhunter make no attempts at playing it cool, they spend most of their time gazing at their shoes and shaking their heads around, generally appearing totally lost in the music. But when the heads come up at the end of each song the smiles betray a band who just love playing music. And fighting through the poor sound there is undoubtedly a great band on the Andrew’s Lane stage tonight, a band full of great ideas and with the talent to realise those ideas.

But are the haircuts in the right place this evening? Are Deerhunter destined for indie-icon status? On tonight’s basis it’s hard to tell but they certainly seem to be heading in the right direction. Watch this space.