Deerhunter - Revival

They’ve been about a bit, have Deerhunter. And like any band with three albums to their name, you could forgive the Atlanta four-piece for sounding a little jaded and cynical by now. That’s why the vaguely ramshackle opening bars of this single from forthcoming album ‘Halcyon Digest’ come as a pleasant surprise. With a carefree sweetness, jangly guitar and twangy banjo, the song starts off bathed in a warm, jovial light. You can easily imagine waking up to it on a Sunday morning. A sunny one, at that.

In between choruses this is a bright, airy spacious record. But it’s not all sunshine and candyfloss. There’s a darker, more urgent undercurrent, driven in part by the Bowie-like, disruptive, scratchy noise of a wooden guiro beneath the other instruments. A sinister feeling emerges with a little more menace during every chorus and is underlined by tellingly uncertain lyrics.

‘Darkness, always / It doesn’t make much sense’ sings vocalist Bradford Cox. These ambiguous lines ratchet up the suspense that lies at the heart of this cracking single, leaving you unsure whether he’s walking away from the light or towards it. And that’s right where he leaves things, with an abrupt ending that neither soars towards a bright future or plunges off a cliff. If this was a film, it would be a complex, evocative story with loose ends all over the place. And you’d still want to watch it again.