Kevin Barnes take note: THIS is how you play a show when you’re ill. Even if you’re cripplingly sick, there’s no need to be a nonchalant cock about it. Taking requests from the audience for your encore? Taking the time to talk to fans before and after the show? Producing the funniest banter yet heard in the walls of San Fran Bathhouse? Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox proved himself a gentleman and a deprecating wizard on the mic, setting the standard for how to approach an audience whilst under the killer gaze of swine flu*. No amount of theatrics is going to top that. Ripping into the audience at the back of the room (‘I mean you can stand there, I like your jeans or whatever’), and subtly digging at Wavves, his sharpness only broadened the smiles of a crowd already in a state of bliss from their set.
OH YEAH, THE MUSIC.
The noise jam into and out of opener Cryptograms was a blasted statement of intent from the band – rather than replicate the more accessible moments of Microcastle and Cryptograms, their show was to be a soothing wall of noise, Bradford Cox’s vocals warped with reverb and sliding in amongst the guitar duel between himself and Lockett Plundt (who, for the record, could not be Cox’s high school chum, the dude looks fucking SIXTEEN). Plundt’s presence was calm and almost unnoticed, in comparison with Cox’s ungainly concentration, leaning over his guitar to warp out the Nothing Ever Happened solo, the excruciating look of effort on his face as he moaned out the notes of Cover Me (Slowly), and particularly the beautiful first half of closer Microcastle. Given his voice was affected by illness and warped throughout the set, the miraculously perfect rendition of the bare-bones title track went pretty unacknowledged by the crowd, prompting Cox to sarcastically say ‘fine, now the cool bit’ as they finished the night on a noisy low. But that’s one low point in a set of Olympian highs, which constantly had me amazed as to how they kept such a level of euphoria up.
For example once the damaging swirl of Fluorescent Grey subsided, there was a moment where you couldn’t be sure what would come next. Having already played Nothing Ever Happened, Cryptograms, Fluorescent Grey, Never Stops and Little Kids, what would maintain this level of joyous noise? Oh yeah. Vox Celeste. WOW. You almost feel bad for fogretting that even what’s essentially a B-album (Weird Era Cont.) holds its own in every way. Failing to halt for banter until the encore really, Deerhunter were actually phenomenal. The smiles on everyones’ faces. The eye contact with strangers which immediately communicated the ‘OH MY GOD’ feeling when the band telepathically switched from noise jam into Never Stops. Singing ‘Patiently, patiently’ along with Cox in Fluorescent Grey. We came. We saw. We came. We want to see again.
It wasn’t really a show that can be given justice by any amount of words or party photos (LOL) of the band itself. For them, this was just another show on a tour that had certainly taken its toll on Cox’s health. For we the crowd, it was an hour of being enraptured and ecstatic: the unerring smiles on the faces of the crowd (during and afterwards) bore testament to Deerhunter’s cleansing, powerful, unfuckingbelievable live show. Total catharsis. This review can’t do it justice, find some photos of the crowd on Facebook. The smiles tell the story better than I can.
*Possible exaggeration
