Music : Indie : AAC







Deerhunter - iTunes Live from SoHo (EP)(2011)(AAC M4A@256)









Review from Ptichfork:




Fake blood, cross-dressing, rambling banter, onstage scuffles, and extremely enthusiastic co-signs from Karen O and Liars: the early buzz that surrounded Deerhunter was the sort of myth-making that would have crushed lesser bands. Thankfully, the group's more headline-grabbing antics are now a distant second talking point to their eclectic sound. Over the past four years, Deerhunter have taken on ambient suites, 1950s balladry, charging krautrock, Stones-esque swagger, and blistering shoegaze with equal aplomb. On last year's Halcyon Digest, the final track, "He Would Have Laughed", ended abruptly; it's as if the band wished to leave to the listener's imagination what, exactly, their next move would be.

As a studio act, they've played with refracted genre tics, maintaining a penchant for experimentation even while becoming more of a mainstream viability. As a live entity, though, the near opposite has happened: They've gotten tighter, more straightforward, more no-nonsense. The tour behind 2008's Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. still contained a touch of tension-riddled shenanigans-- one needed only to take a look at the other band members' faces while former guitarist/actual cheerleader Whitney Petty did cartwheels on stage at one of the NYC stops to know how they felt about it. The controlled blasts of power packed within their setlists, though, suggested a band that had shifted their aim from stage banter to stagecraft. During the band's outing this past fall supporting Halcyon Digest, Deerhunter delivered a monolithic set that sometimes ended with Bradford Cox and guitarist Lockett Pundt creating squalls of guitar noise, a move reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine's infamous squall of noise at the end of live closer "You Made Me Realise". They possess an air of seriousness now, and when Deerhunter appeared on "Late Show With David Letterman" last month, one was tempted to use a word previously unassociated with the band: professional.

It's that level of now-unquestionable ability that makes Deerhunter's iTunes-only live mini-LP, iTunes Live from SoHo, an excellent near-equivalent to catching the band live. Recorded the week of Halcyon Digest's release at the SoHo Apple Store, this 42-minute document is far from the tossed-off affair one would expect from an in-store appearance. Songs with previously tenuous connections craftily bleed into one another, like the dawn-rising transition from the Lockett-led "Desire Lines" to Cryptograms standout "Hazel St." There are welcome embellishments, like the descending, drip-drop extended intro to "Helicopter" and "Don't Cry"'s dreamy dropout. There's radical reconfiguring, too: witness the metamorphosis of the title track to 2009's Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP, which sheds its spindly clothes to reveal a gently stomping take with guitar work recalling forgotten 4AD heroes Pale Saints. Every take here sounds as good as the songs' LP counterparts; some of them actually improve on the originals.

This success has to do with the fact that, at this point, Deerhunter are a band that knows how to play together very well, combining each others' strengths to create engulfing chasms of sound. And yet, it's also impossible not to notice how strong Cox has become as a frontman. One of Halcyon Digest's more left-turn moments was the swinging, sax-led "Coronado", and Cox has certainly applied that song's cocksure bravado to his vocal technique since. He exudes a commanding presence on "Rainwater Cassette Exchange", toying with phrasing to add drama and tossing in asides where he was previously content to let his voice become just another instrument. Occasionally, he breaks into a higher non-falsetto register, like in the middle melodic turn of "Don't Cry" or during "Hazel St."'s ascendant peak; the effect is thrilling and easy at the same time, and hopefully it'll be replicated in the future. Bradford isn't just a persona anymore; he's a performer, and here he relishes the notion wholeheartedly.

iTunes Live from SoHo closes with a 10-minute-plus rendition of Halcyon Digest's séance-like closer "He Would Have Laughed". The recorded version breathes in and out, trading gusts of open air with jangly darkness; here, the band wastes no time diving into deep sonic depths, creating a tense atmosphere that slowly and gorgeously dissolves like rain on a window. The full-bodied closure extends to the set as a whole, emphasizing an issue that some die-hards had with Halcyon Digest: The songs were ace, but compared to the full-on aural assault of previous highs like the throttling smash-bang of Microcastle capper "Twilight at Carbon Lake", there wasn't as much immediate texture. Sometimes, it felt like a part of the band that used to be was missing. iTunes Live from SoHo, then, serves as a reminder for fans that missed out on the last tour and are desirous for thicker sounds: Deerhunter still have plenty of meat on their bones, and if this release is any indication, they're not going hungry any time soon.

— Larry Fitzmaurice, March 4, 2011
 
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15168-itunes-live-from-soho/








01. Desire Lines (6:44)
02. Hazel St. (3:26)
03. Don't Cry (4:30)
04. Revival (2:27)
05. Helicopter (7:51)
06. Fountain Stairs (2:39)
07. Rainwater Cassette Exchange (3:21)
08. He Would Have Laughed (10:17)
 
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/itunes-live-from-soho/id415565448









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