Atlas Sound: Kicking The Dust Off The Inner Dark, The Darkest Kind
May 13, 2008
Words by Jacob Henneman
Illustration by Anna Wadham
Bradford Cox has become the target of much criticism since Deerhunter crept onto the musical radar. Check the nearest blog for any of the gossip or hearsay he has been attracting in the past year after most people loved _Cryptograms_ and the rest felt the need to bash it, and him. It’s so easy to pick on Deerhunter for the same reason people showed huge amounts of disdain for artists like Battles and Panda Bear. Somewhere, a voice echoing into webspace eternity is calling out, "I just didn’t get it." Cox is such an easy target because of his ambition. No one can ever fault him for that, but the haters use it as a jumping-off point.
Going solo was inevitable, as he has written songs as Atlas Sound for some time. _Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel_ is eleven words that reads more like a riddle or Nietzsche quote than an album title by any artist other than Silver Mount Zion. When you wear that ambition on your sleeve, as Cox does, there will always be people questioning whether his reach is further than his grasp. And the good thing is this long titled album by a solo artist named after a mighty Roman titan who held the weight of the world on his shoulders doesn’t reach far at all. It is encapsulated and tightly wound within the mind’s recesses - those of Cox and us all.
If the mind is indeed a room, _Let the Blind_ is its excavation. Deep under all the layers of bone and tissue is a dark and shrouded place. Sometimes you need a torch to light the shadowy chambers and cracks in the wall. Cox is searching the black corners of his psyche before our very ears, clearing away the cobwebs and kicking out the dust to clear some room to let us in. And, of course, he’s drenching his sounds in spectral voices cascading all around.
This disc is all about reaching into that darkness and feeling around for the twisted metallic remnants of a song’s skeleton - a pop song gone wrong, a bedroom ambiance. Sometimes inspiration best comes out of these uncharted places: A story from your childhood, something that changed you or scared the shit out of you. Every once in a while there’s a hole in the wall and only if you’re brave enough to reach in - into the darkest part of darkness - will you get the result of something scary good. It’s like in _Temple of Doom_, when Kate Capshaw has to reach into that creepy crawly hole to pull the lever that saves Indy. Shit is going to get pretty hairy, but you’ve got to know it's all for your benefit in the end.
Thoughts buried within and underneath the reverb, fighting their way to the surface among the acidic soundscapes. This is a frightening album. If the opening track, a children’s ghost story doesn’t chill you, Cox hushed voice will eventually chill its way to your core, trust me. "I’m so in love with you but you drown me. How many boys have you drowned?" "Quarantined and kept. I’m waiting to be changed."
If _Let the Blind_ is meant to scare you, to make you focus inward and confront what is there, it has done its job. But if this brilliantly off-putting album teaches us anything, it's that if you close your eyes, you’re not blind, you’re just searching your own inner darkness.
