Deer Tick, Negativity
2013 | Label: Partisan Records
If 2012′s Divine Providence was Deer Tick’s last-call bar-romp, Negativity is the Rhode Island quintet’s bleak morning-after. Much more introspective and subdued, Negativity largely ditches the group’s trademark drunken swagger for emotional and musical depth.
Singer John McCauley wrote Negativity in the course of a year in which he suffered a broken engagement and his father’s incarceration for tax fraud, all while alternating between smoking cocaine and trying to clean up. As such, the lyrical content of Negativity is appropriately abject: The quasi-ballad “Mr. Sticks” addresses McCauley’s dad and “The… more »










