By this point Deerhunter are pretty much untouchable. Every album has been awarded ‘Best New Music’ by tastemaker website Pitchfork, something really quiet extraordinary for a website notorious for its tendency to ‘build ‘em up and knock ‘em down’ in regards to the artists it chooses to champion.

Front man Bradford Cox is the kind of wonderful eccentric that bands with a die-hard cult followings are meant to have. This is the man who once performed a now legendary hour-long rendition of ‘My Sharona’ after a gig-goer jokingly heckled it as a request. But after being in a hospitalising car crash last year, the narrative being built around Fading Frontier Bradford Cox is beginning to mellow out a bit; the self-described ‘domestic’ Deerhunter album. Prior to its release the band revealed an interactive mind map of the albums influences, and at its center was Cox’s adopted dog Faulkner. On the surface level, the shimmering synth-leaden dream pop of ‘Living My Life’ or ‘Take Care’ could go a long way to convincing you this new found cosiness is the case. But as ever, Cox refuses to make things so easy for you.

Deerhunter’s music doesn’t really prescribe to any one particular genre (excluding the single-mindedness of 2013’s Monomania). Lo-Fi Indie, Shoegaze, 50’s pop, raggedy blues and dream pop are all packed together like clay and baked in the sweltering sun of the American Deep South that the band call home. In fact its this sense of place that makes Deerhunter’s sound so instantly recognisable no matter what shape they choose to mold themselves into. It’s the Southern Gothic tradition, and the themes their music shares with it, which strings everything together. Tackling spirituality, morality and redemption in a world populated by sleaziness and deformity.

The bluesy main riff of ‘Snakeskin’ has all the trashiness of a John Waters film, made all the more jarring following the pleasantly foggy “Leather and Wood’. Cox claims he was “born already nailed to the cross” but later tells us almost seductively he was “born with a snake like walk”. Faith and sexuality are intermingled into an unsettling, psychosexual mess. ‘Breaker’, with its bright, clean production, is up there with the best songs the band has produced to date. A rubbery bass line and sprinkled, sparkling synths give way to what has to be one of their most uplifting choruses. “Christ / or Credit” is the dialectic proposition Cox offers you, showing a similar to preoccupation to that other well known voice of the Southern Gothic, author Flannery O’Connor, who explores the tension between deep-rooted faith and modern capitalism.

As ever the imagery of faith and religion is everywhere, but rarely referring to what they initially seem to. Songs, lines, even single words carry multiple and contradictory meanings. Album closer ‘Carrion’ is deliberately used to sound as Cox is saying “Carry on”. The song seems to be a metaphor for finding a home, like a blind mole, but also being buried. Is it pointing to life after death or laughing in the face of such notions? Most likely the answer is both. Or neither. Its basically impossible to unpack what Cox actually believes or what he is even really trying to say, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of fun to be had attempting to solve the riddle. Personally? More than ever before Cox seems to be ceding defeat to the inner struggles that plague Deerhunter’s music, but there’s at least some solace to be taken from the material present. “I’m alive / and that’s something” is about as much he, or anyone, can say for certain.

This is not Deerhunter’s best album. Nor, as most critics will have you believe, is the repressive nostalgia of Halycon Digest. If there was any justice in the world, the title would unequivocally be given to the still waters of 2009’s Microcastle and the violent thrashing happening beneath its surface as it reaches for air. Fading Frontier is, however, probably one of their most palatable, offering more open doors into their world than most of their records.

Deerhunter are special though. They’re producing one of those peerless discographies that years from now will be picked apart endlessly in retrospective articles. The thing is they’re here now, with us and still making music. So get in whilst you still can. It’s not going to last forever.

Louis Ormesher

Website: deerhuntermusic.com
Facebook: facebook.com/deerhuntermusicgroup