I have never been completely sold on Atlas Sound, the solo project from Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, a band I admire more than most in indie rock. Cox’s use of bloopy synths with what sounded like Deerhunter at its core frustrated me; it sounded cheesy and sometimes insincere. Since 2009’s Logos I had trouble grasping that his ideas could be leashed and controlled without the band supporting him. Then came Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, an album that only got better with each listen. It was also quite different from their past releases with most of the ambience from Cryptograms gone wayside and the focus on strong songwriting entered the forefront. Post-Halcyon, I had felt the same way about Atlas Sound, but I was ready to give Cox another chance by himself with Parallax and it paid off.
From the get-go, I got the new Deerhunter vibe off of it with “The Shakes”, one of the more rocky tracks on Parallax. This had pleased me, but I was looking for something else from Bradford that I couldn’t even explain. However, I had begun to find something as I was progressing through the album. Whether it was what I wanted, I cannot say for sure, but there was a theme I just could not grasp from Logos. I began to understand somewhat of a consistency in a psychedelic, spiritual, or science-fiction inspired material; this extremely natural, yet artificial and strange sound. This is how his addition of electronic elements clicked with me. I imagined a large piece of low-populated land in New Mexico that had been experiencing strange celestial occurrences, as New Mexico is ought to do. Let’s just call this place El Paralaje.
The thoughts kept popping up as I went through my multiple listens, I could see everything, especially in the last five tracks where all these different moods clash together and create a block of incredibly written music and an atmosphere consistent with El Paralaje. “Doldrums”, a mellowed synth, piano, and ambient track is as beautiful as it is mysterious which then unexpectedly enters into “My Angel is Broken”, which sounds like it could have been right off Halcyon Digest, but at the same time, gracefully fits into Parallax.
The final three songs are my favorites and are the ones tie this album’s plot together. “Terra Incognita” is the least Atlas Sound-sounding song by Atlas Sound I had ever heard. It is beautiful to a degree that I have never heard from even Deerhunter and it stands as the enigmatic song of the album and perhaps the year. This is the song where I can see, hear and feel El Paralaje in its most grand form. After that comes “Flagstaff”, a track in a similar vein of “Terra Incognita”. It has a lingering feel of progressive music and when it builds, even post-rock. When “Flagstaff” comes together at the end though, it feels like a proper way to lead on, with a cleansing three or so minutes of ambience until it leads to the final track “Lightworks”, an extremely light-hearted rock track. Morning has come in El Paralaje and everything is just as suspicious as it was before. Parallax will keep repeating and we will either cast it out as a myth or believe, and this album made me want to believe.
WINNER: Parallax by Atlas Sound
WHY: The album has a consistency in its vivid theme and is also well-composed and a joy to listen to. In that idea, it is the kind of album most artists slave to achieve.
Fermata over Whole Rest 