Deerhunter at Rockefeller

American rock band Deerhunter gave a balanced show that didn’t fully recreate the intricacies of their albums.

Vocalist and founder Bradford Cox greeted the audience at Rockefeller with vocal recorded loops and diverse cacophonies that had promises of a more intricate presentation. They started with their «Intro» song from their first album, Turn It Up Faggot, followed by the perfect combo «Cryptograms» from the same record, immediately immersing the audience into familiar grounds.  

Cox, well known for his chameleonic style – both musically and personally speaking – offered a constant variation of genres that swung from mellow indie rock, to garage rock to dream pop.  

A treat of new and old + some problems

It was not until the third song that the new album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? from January, made its appearance with «No One’s Sleeping», which in turn is followed by «What Happens to People?».

The album, recorded in Texas, seems to truly show the most recent concerns and interests of the indie band, while they appeared rather content performing these new songs. I guess most of the bands grow tired of playing the old hits. Even so, Deerhunter pleased its audience through the night with many classics from the past, such as «Helicopter», «Revival», and «Desire Lines» from Halcyon Digest, one of their most accomplished albums.  

However, the overall sound for most of the songs was a little bit over the top. Some of the screaming and shouting actually got downright annoying, thus not really leading to the desired effect of excitement.  One will have to admit that even though Deerhunter has created some of the best and most substantial tunes of the indie rock in the last years, the voice and singing of Mr. Cox is not the best the band has to offer.   

Strong ending, good quality, but…

Yet, the audience is attentive and engaged, and the band has offered a fairly and steady high quality musical performance. The vocalist takes a few moments to introduce the band, Lockett Pundt on guitar, Moses Archuleta on drums, Josh McKay on the bass, and  Javier Morales on keyboards as well as the sax.

Towards the end we get «Nocturne», showing one of the more quirky and playful sides of the band. After the encore the band continued with even more classics, «Agoraphobia» and «Monomania». I believe that Deerhunter has done a very steady and good rock for the past years, with this last record being one of my favourites these days.  However, I felt that the expertise and level of detail found in their records was not fully displayed on stage.