Deerhunter are either one of the toughest ambient bands or one of the most ambient tough bands you will ever come across; the difference hardly matters, because the group is so good at being both. After their gritty breakthrough in 2007 with Cryptograms and the wild charge of Deerhunter's increasingly storied live shows, the initial hush and softness of Microcastle might come as a surprise. In "Agoraphobia," Bradford Cox sings softly over guitars that ring and chime almost like R.E.M. This being Deerhunter, though, that mood proves deceiving; the ring quickly takes on sinister tones and Cox gets to singing, with an eerie stoic desperation, "I had a dream no longer to be free/ I want only to see four walls made of concrete."

There's a lot of fantasizing about freedom and constraint here, both in the lyrics and in the strangely nervy take on shoegaze that Deerhunter have made their métier. "Little Kids" offers a comely melody that builds and builds into a vaporous din, and "Nothing Ever Happened" (one the best songs of this year, by far) launches into a raucous motorik krautrock jam, sending out frayed signals of hooks in glimmers. On the whole, Microcastle proves more… read more »