Album Reviews: Joan Of Arc, Deerhunter [Music]

The band members’ forays into heady experimentalism in sister act Make Believe seem to have mellowed bandleader Tim Kinsella’s occasionally extravagant weird streak. Make no mistake, this is still an undeniably weird record, as suggested by curious song titles like “The Garden Of Cartoon Exclamations” (which, lyrically, turns out to be literal) and the scraping noise collage of "Fasting." But the band seems more interested than ever in arranging uncommonly pretty instrumentation, especially the intertwined guitar lines on the title track and the hypnotic drift of "Explain Yourselves"; much like the album’s namesake, these twelve tunes stretch upward and outward in a myriad of elegant and colorful ways. -Matthew V. DeWitt

Joan Of Arc MySpace

Image from 4AD website

Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP
(4AD)

As a unit of measurement, the EP is a strange bird. Lacking either the focus of a single or the breadth of a full-length album, extended players have, historically, nevertheless wound up as repositories of a given artist’s best and weirdest ideas (cases in point: The Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim, My Bloody Valentine's Tremelo and Glider, Ice Cube's Kill At Will etc.). Rainwater Cassette Exchange is the second EP by Atlanta quartet Deerhunter and their first release for the venerable art-rock imprint 4AD, and continues the band's recent tendency toward combining early-80s post-punk with junior-prom ballads--indeed, the recording's washed-out sound seems to intentionally evoke long-gone eras. As hauntingly beautiful as it is brief, RCE balances hazy pop gems like the Phil Spector pastiche of the title track with propulsive, two-minute post-punk jolts. Of these, the excellent “Disappearing Ink” and the insidious chorus of “Famous Last Words” linger, proving this singular band is capable of balancing both sides of the "avant-pop" designation remarkably well. -Matthew V. DeWitt

Deerhunter MySpace