I’ll start by saying that I like Deerhunter. And while Monomania may have felt a bit overlong and undercooked, I’m reasonably convinced that their 2010 album Halcyon Digest is one of the best albums of the 2000s. I say this to give some context to lavish praise I’m about to heap onto their new album, Fading Frontier.
To start: Fading Frontier is better than Halcyon Digest, which is saying quite a lot. Fading Frontier a carefully crafted 36-minute masterpiece, filled with inventive songwriting, melodies that surprise you at every turn, and the best, most striking set of lyrics Bradford Cox has ever written.