DEERHUNTER with MARY LATTIMORE at Danforth Music Hall (147 Danforth), Thursday (February 21), doors 7 pm. $27.50-$30. ticketmaster.ca.
Bradford Cox doesn’t mince words.
The Deerhunter frontperson’s commitment to creating engaging conversations, both within his work and in interviews about it, has kept things interesting over the course of the Atlanta indie rock band’s nearly two-decade career – even if the attention he’s gotten isn’t the kind he’d like.
The band’s recently released eighth album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? marks a notable shift in the narrative from the personal to more universal themes – such as the end of the world as we know it.
With deadpan vocals that contrast the upbeat, concise instrumentals, Cox and the band explore various forms of erasure, with references to environmental destruction, disease and a diminishing sense of humanity and histories in the face of newness and technology.
Over the years, Deerhunter’s output has been haunted by misfortune. They recorded 2015’s Fading Frontier in the aftermath of a car accident that left Cox on the brink of death. This new record follows the tragic passing of their friend and former bandmate, bassist Josh Fauver.
We spoke to Cox from his home in Atlanta on the eve of Deerhunter’s North American tour about how they made it this far, how they’ve weathered various misfortunes and why you shouldn’t expect them to quit anytime soon.
You often seem to get yourself into hot water with the things you say in interviews. Do you like talking about your music or is it just a necessary evil?
I don’t ever say things that aren’t true. I might have a little fun and say things like, “I’m the new Bowie” [in a recent Rolling Stone interview], which was misinterpreted. I say things to start a debate. If somebody said, “We’re the new Beatles,” I would think, “What a douche.” But I was talking about being someone who changes their goals about what they want to do from album to album. As a person who makes art rock, and makes challenging records that have interesting instrumentation and can back it all up with a lot of personality, that is what my job is.
I don’t think I’m as good as David Bowie, but if you’re going to tell me someone like James Blake is the new David Bowie, I’m going to shoot myself in the head. Nothing against the guy, but the reality is he’s not really taking a lot of risks. That’s what Bowie did, and he didn’t compromise. [Blake] is going to sell a lot more records and have a lot more people like him [than Deerhunter], but I definitely don’t compromise. And that’s why people don’t like me!
Deerhunter records often seem to be reactions to each other. Was having to speak so directly to your near-death experience on Fading Frontier responsible for the less personal narrative on this record?
I don’t think it’s conscious. Any events in anyone’s lives are reactions against previous events in their lives. My own mortality isn’t different than anybody else’s! People die every day. People who are never even remembered. For me to die, it would be with [the] privilege [of knowing I’d be remembered], because people would still get listen to my music.
This album has been described as a sort of reflection on “the state of things” in a social-political sense. What’s your opinion on people looking to celebrities for political insight?
I think if you’re writing material that has an undercurrent of political thought, you can’t get angry when people ask you about politics. If you’re talking to Jylie Kenner – is that a person? – if you’re talking to some Instagram celebrity about their political views, I don’t know if there’s any value to that. I’m not saying their opinions aren’t valid. They’re as valuable as anyone else’s, but no more valuable than anyone else’s.
Regarding the shift in tone on this record, have you had to reflect on what people expect from Deerhunter?
I hope that what they expect from us is consistency. One thing I’m certain of is that we’ve never made a bad album, and I say that without arrogance. When I listen to an album I make and I’m not absolutely sure that it needs to be out, or unsure that it will be a worthy contribution to the world of music, I will not put it out.
Some critics have described Fading Frontier and Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? as more chilled-out than 2007’s Cryptograms and 2008’s Microcastle, which have more purposeful aggression. Was that intentional?
I have no clue what that means. I think this stuff is way more frightening and strange than our early work. If you listen to Lake Somerset [from Cryptograms] for instance, I’ll tell you what it is: Josh Fauver was an incredible bass player. He brought a sinister sound to the band, but he is dead. He’s not coming back and I’m not going to hire some 25-year-old kid to copy his approach. I have to move forward, and that doesn’t mean that I want to make “chilled-out” music. This album has a very animated corpse quality to it, or like a self-driving car gone wrong. There’s just something not natural about it.
Having lost band members and faced your own health issues and near-death experiences, what would you say is the source of your resilience as a band?
You just have to get on with it. Everyone has their misfortunes, and everyone has their difficulties that they have to work around, although ours have been insane. This has been going on for me since I was a teenager. I grew up spending all this time in a hospital. You can’t just sit there and feel sorry for yourself. Well, you should stop and feel sorry for yourself for a minute. It’s part of the process. I wouldn’t know how to stop. We’re kind of stuck in this. This is what we have built for ourselves.
@nowtoronto | @KevinHeggs_
