Deerhunter

27/06/2013 Dancity Festival, Foligno

Hailed almost as messiahs by the most elitist and uncompromising indie crowd, Deerhunter arrive at the Dancity Festival in Foligno less than two months after the release of “Monomania“, the latest effort from Cox & co. It's a solid, sturdy album that updates the frontman's shadowy, existential journey but sheds the psychedelic streaks and inventive arrangements of “Halcyon Digest“, which remains the band's finest album. The 2013 version of Deerhunter has added muscle and leather jackets to a sound that now reeks of America and late-night garages, leaving only a faint echo of their past ambient experiments. Make no mistake, “Monomania” is an important chapter for the Atlanta band and, as far as this writer is concerned, one of the best releases of the year. But when it comes to Deerhunter expectations are always high, and five albums into their career, putting out a good record might no longer be enough. Many were hoping for the masterpiece that still hasn't arrived.

It's raining and cold in Foligno. Summer still feels like a distant dream. Deerhunter, dressed casual, take the stage to find only a handful aficionados gathered in the front rows to wait for them. There is a line, but only to grab a spot sheltered from the storm looming over the Umbrian city. From the very start it's clear the evening will be a complicated one. Walls of guitar at deafening volumes swallow up Cox's voice, and the drums are just a distant echo. When "Earthquake" kicks in, the power cuts out and everything grinds to a halt. Moses Archuleta seizes the moment, improvising a drum solo to the delight of the crowd, who thus get to see for themselves that he's a hell of a drummer. The wait drags on, and so Cox and the rest of the band also arm themselves with sticks and tambourines for a little show within the show. The lights come back on and they start up again with eardrum-splitting noise. Having given up hope of being swept along by Cox's moods and empathetic hooks, we find ourselves faced with a genuine guitar-band. And, ladies and gentlemen, the material is top quality. Lockett Pundt confirms himself as one of the finest guitarists of his generation, crafting arpeggios and instrumental codas that amount to a precious primer of different genres and styles. He's the true musical star of the evening, even if all the attention goes to Cox. Bradford moves well on stage and even winks at the crowd, revealing a shy charm that seems to contradict what's written about him, though from the stage there's no sign of the chemistry needed between the band's various components. Personalities too overbearing? Perhaps so. Cox jokes with the crowd, Pundt raises an eyebrow. Cox (always) takes the initiative, and the two guitars shoot him a withering look. Oh well. "Desire Lines" sets everyone straight again with thatguitar that sounds a lot like Arcade Fire. They dip into the track of the last two LPs without any stylistic missteps and with real craft. Cox aside, the band comes across as fairly static and lacking in mood.

“Sleepwalking” warms up the crowd with its delicious bubblegum melody and a liberating chorus lifted by the shimmer of Lockett Pundt's guitar. “Back To The Middle” seems to rouse Frankie Broyles, crucial to the rhythm section but often absent from the spotlight. No one's moshing, no one's singing along, but everyone watches, hypnotized and focused, until Cox sends a wig flying into the crowd, “surprise, surprise!” The grand finale belongs entirely to “Monomania”, which is, metaphorically, a summary of Deerhunter's whole poetics. The guitars soar skyward, Cox clings to the mic screaming “If you can't send me an angel”, but no one hears him. Yet everything that needs to land, lands: in those sad eyes, in the failure to communicate radiating from the stage, in the tender, sugary pop choruses that cut through the guitars' nervous edges, there's a symbolic universe with the force of a punch to the face. And in this delirium, which in many ways is generational, Cox's “Monomania” dissolves into an endless instrumental coda, turning into pure chaos before fading into harmless background noise.

It ends like this, with the crowd already diving into the rhythms of the night and Cox alone on stage, tying up loose ends and packing away the instruments. Just a few metres away the party has already started, and the obsessive rhythms of Shackleton explode into the clouds over Foligno.

(Luca Stefanucci)

If it's true that certain gigs, thanks to a particular combination of factors, turn out perfect, unforgettable, unique, then by some sadistic law of karma there must also be nights when “if something can go wrong, it will go wrong three times over”. Sadly, that's the case with the Bologna date of American band Deerhunter, back in the Emilian city two years after their incendiary show at Locomotiv. Anyone who was there that night can attest to a truly memorable, psychedelic set, not only because the album just out at the time was the excellent “Halcyon Digest” (whereas “Monomania” strikes us as a transitional, “minor” effort), but above all because of the state of grace Bradford Cox & co. were in, able to entertain the large crowd with a setlist running over two hours, unfazed - if anything even more fired up - by the venue's suffocating heat, and not skimping on surprises or long, immersive instrumental suites.

Back to the present, on a damp Tuesday evening at Bolognetti Rocks. The band that takes the stage at 10:10pm, over half an hour later than the time announced by staff, is visibly shyer than one might have expected. Everyone seems rather withdrawn, perhaps tired, from guitarist Lockett Pundt to new bassist Josh McKay. The live opens with the garage-rock of "Neon Junkyard", and continues along the unruly, raucous lines of the latest studio album.

The mix of sounds is often muddled and imperfect: that's not really a problem, given that “Monomania” is a record built mainly around a rejection of formal polish and post-production embellishment. No, the real issue, as Bradford Cox himself pointed out repeatedly, is that the band was forced to play at lower volumes than their usual standard (as many of you will know, the courtyard on Vicolo Bolognetti sits right in the city centre, where a municipal ordinance caps the maximum decibel level): a restriction that clearly didn't sit well with Cox, who kept joking about it throughout, inviting the audience - not many of them, it must be said, and rather cold - to move closer to the stage to “block the sound” and keep the noise from the surrounding street from disrupting the show. Perhaps just out of a whim from the band's frontman, who was rumoured to have been drunk since early afternoon, the show proceeded in fits and starts, with Deerhunter often coasting on autopilot, at other times throwing off sparks like they used to.

Cox, in a striped blouse and "emo" wig, is in a joking mood, perhaps too much so: he announces the much-requested "Nothing Ever Happened" and instead launches into "Memory Boy" (not a single track from as stunning an album as "Microcastle"), throws off the setlist a fan was trying to sneak a peek at, keeps complaining and apologizing for the acoustics of the location. The best moment comes in the middle section, dedicated to the psych-pop from "Halcyon Digest", with "Don’t Cry", "Revival" and the epic crescendo of Lockett Pundt's "Desire Lines".

The rest of the set held few surprises, aside from a long, suffocating cover of Stereolab's “Blue Milk”, which dragged on for over ten minutes: “Monomania” was plundered from top to bottom, from the pop of “Back To The Middle”, to the hallucinated funk of “T.H.M”, all the way to the unleashed noise of the title track (during which, in all likelihood, the decibel limits were shamelessly broken!), closing out a frustrating, bizarre performance right at its peak. Shortly before, at 11pm, a member of the staff shouted at Cox and co. “ten more minutes!”, a sign that the fun was about to be cut short.

A skimpy hour-long live set from a band that could have, and should have, done so much more, but instead settled for a passable, unremarkable outing.

Without pointing the finger at anyone in particular, whether it's the Bolognetti Rocks organizers or Deerhunter themselves, but with the certainty of having witnessed a concert that leaves a bitter aftertaste. Anyone who was at the Locomotiv, that fiery April two years ago, won't be able to tell me I'm wrong.

(Alex Poltronieri)