Following up a masterpiece is never an easy task, even if you’re the Beatles and you rack them up in a long sequential row. Deerhunter’s Microcastle is one such album, which coupled with the bonus disc, Weird Era Cont., offered the best bargain on instantly classic rock music during all of last year. Whether Deerhunter sensed this or not, they made a choice that is guaranteed to both succeed and fail. Dropping a five-song, fifteen-minute EP ensures that expectations aren’t overwhelming and automatically avoids comparisons to the recent full-length. But because it’s such a short excursion, it’ll be difficult to get the juice flowing for anyone but the faithful; after all, how often does a band’s EPs ever overshadow their long players? After Alice in Chains, any other choice would be highly debatable.
Coming only about seven months after their last effort, the release reeks of B-side cash-in. But the warts-and-all giveaway bug was satisfied by Weird Era. So what does Rainwater Cassette Exchange offer? The title suggests that it’ll be in concert with the practice of swapping tapes of underground bands with friends (if you don’t know what a cassette tape is, ask an older sibling). That is, of course, a joke, but the issue at hand makes the reference curious. Because this is an age of song and album leaks, downloads, websites, fan blogs, forums and any other means of discussing, sharing, stealing, slipping and pirating music, the notion of sharing cassettes with hissy sound and muddy quality seems quite alien. Hell, you can amass quite a bit of knowledge of independent labels and their bands without ever leaving your computer. And Deerhunter’s occasionally lo-fi, frequently fuzzy and always free-minded aesthetic plays into those kind of feelings. If Bradford Cox and crew had recorded fifteen years ago, this set would probably be heard mostly in slightly-sun-melted tapes with scratched casings, Sharpie scribblings over the masking tape label, and that one really bad spot on the recording where the sound warps hideously.
Nostalgia factor aside, it’s both more convenient and kinder to the senses that so much is digital now. No matter how much you cherished the bands you loved but none of your friends even knew about (it was like your own amazing little secret), deep down, you still wanted everyone to hear what only you thought you knew. Rainwater Cassette Exchange won’t be some miracle cult recording, but it does offer more progression than one would expect from such a small break. The Deerhunter best remembered from their early Turn It Up, Faggot and Cryptograms efforts has virtually vanished, replaced by accessible psychedelic noise and garage rock. What we get from the effort should satisfy pretty much everyone who liked Microcastle, but probably won’t blow anyone away; with a lone exception, these songs are best described as solid, agreeable and pleasant, but not a whole lot that’ll get you rushing to pass it around amongst your buddies.
The title track is a haze of heavy-lidded drawling over a monumentally laidback melody that sounds more like the “tropical punk” label than anything produced by Abe Vigoda. Cox begins blurrily muttering, “Two weeks of misery capture my heart and destroy me,” over a melody strange enough to suggest a hallucination. “Disappearing Ink” is the most energetic of the bunch, pouncing right off the bat and churning a simple riff with the most basic transitions available (Strokes with more reverb, I guess). “Circulation” also jams out in the garage, but takes a few left turns along the way to show more ambition than the typically sloppy and brief precursors of that genre, and ends on a mysterious note with a sound collage. “Famous Last Words,” however, drifts at a low register—even when the hi-hats get their workouts, it still feels subdued. It’s a song that might have actually benefited from a cleaner treatment; over Cox’s droning tone and wispy fuzz, it feels half-formed and half-hearted. Coming between the locomotive verve of “Ink” and “Game of Diamonds” wasn’t too smart an idea by rule of comparison.
As for “Diamonds,” it was the only song I knew beforehand, but the version leaked by the band a while back is entirely different than the one here. Once a more typical, reverb-drowned mid-tempo rocker, now it’s driven by acoustic guitar, bongo-style percussion and a piano (elements once masked by the distortion)—by Deerhunter’s standards, it’s whistle clean. Cox murmurs plaintively, “No one ever talked to me/I’d forgotten how to speak/A problem with my chemistry,” without ever evoking piteous whining—the softly rolling rhythm is saved from melodrama. Featuring a sound inconsistent even with the sprawling catch-all of Weird Era, it would have been the most notable cut no matter the result; the fact that it’s nearly perfectly arranged and executed (hence, memorable) even outside of Deerhunter’s diverse canon ensures that it’s no mere fluke.
Neither is the new Deerhunter direction, which may be criticized as softening their edges and making a play for the masses, but those sorts of dismissals seem to forget that good songs aren’t meant to keep you at arms length. I wouldn’t quite call them warm pop yet; there’s not enough staggeringly good stuff here to inspire a teary-eyed embrace anyway. But it’s definitely worth a hearty handshake. And if for nothing else, you can pass along hard copies of this thing to people you know who think that Deerhunter is an arcade game down at the local Buffalo wings joint. Accessible as it is, Rainwater Cassette Exchange will give them a fine entry point.
"Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP" is on sale June 9, 2009 from Kranky.
