Deerhunter - Snakeskin

Deerhunter deal in a heady, thick soup. Straddling a line between psychedelia and straight up indie-rock for the last fourteen years has seen the Atlanta group master the art of head-space filling, so as the stripped-back opening seconds of ‘Snakeskin’ slither into life with a radio-friendly disco-revival bounce, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’ve pulled things right back in a cynical bid for chart supremacy. Indeed, it’s a skipping, almost Chic-aping number on the surface; but beneath the shiny exterior that heavy Deerhunter melancholy still finds its home.

“I was born already nailed to the cross,” yelps enigmatic frontman Bradford Cox at the track’s opening, and that gloom filters throughout ‘Snakeskin’ in spite of it’s immediately Jamiroquai reminiscent dancefloor sensibility. As the track hits its midsection though, a foreboding drone and stabs of Hammer horror strings take over, dragging the carefree hop and skip of the track’s opening into the swamp.

As ‘Snakeskin’ progressively sheds those outer layers, it proves that even when writing an ostensibly glittering disco number, Deerhunter can’t help but dip into darkness – with both the immediacy to take on the airwaves and that fine-tuned hypnotism under their belts, ‘Fading Frontier’ may just be their most intoxicating offering yet.