Deerhunter: Monomania

Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox has been frank about the troubling circumstances in which the band’s fifth album came together. In 2011 bassist Josh Fauver quit and Cox, his personal life already in turmoil, started to question whether Deerhunter had a future.

There was just one problem – he’d written a bunch of tracks and didn’t know what to do with them. “I honestly thought when Josh left, ‘Oh well, I guess that’s that’. But then I realised, ‘What am I going to do with all these songs?’ Given the troubled backdrop, it’s no surprise that Monomania, Deerhunter’s first long-player in three years, should be brooding, at times jarring – or that it should contrast starkly with their previous LP, the slick and tune-filled Halcyon Digest.
The overarching mood is confusion and hyperactivity. ‘Neon Junkyard’ suggests an attention deficient Pavement, twanging, country-fried guitars bleeding into a droning chorus that has some of the frazzled weirdness of Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes (like Barnes, Cox is a musician happy to let his demons write his songs). The catchy ‘Leather Jacket II’ is the immediate standout, with a zinging riff and a cathartic white-noise mid-section. There are quieter moments: ‘THM’ has a creeping groove and lyrics that set out Cox’s world view in unambiguous terms. “Ever since I was born,” he croons. “I have felt so forlorn.” The sentiments speak to Monomania’s take-away sensibility, bleak, brimming with regret, and anxious about what happens next.

Key Track: Leather Jacket II