Nearly three months have passed since Atlanta psych-rock quintet Deerhunter released their mammoth second full-length, Cryptograms. Now, Kranky is putting out the Fluorescent Grey EP, a set of four intensely focused songs recorded while the album was being mixed. Though clearer and less abrasive than Cryptograms musically, the new EP foregrounds lead singer Bradford Cox's morbidly erotic lyrics about the body's inevitable decomposition-- to him, a psychosexual puzzle-- much as the full-length smothered its gorgeous melodies in effects-laden squall and instrumental ambience. Whether Fluorescent Grey is meant to serve as an epilogue (as its press release maintains) or prologue, the disc is a triumphant document of a stubbornly visionary young band with the world still spread out before them.
"I woke up," Fluorescent Grey begins, echoing the first words of Cryptograms' transformative "Spring Hall Convert". This time, though, the setting is the dark of night; the phrase "fluorescent grey" describes the color of a boy's dead flesh. Piano gets the EP's eponymous opening track off to a peaceful start, joined soon by crisply enunciated vocals and chiming guitar that patiently explodes into the band's familiar needle-burying territory.
Once again Deerhunter's thematic interests align with those of author Dennis Cooper-- who named his most famous character after a dear ninth-grade friend (and later lover)-- as well as director Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, which Cox cited as his favorite movie in a recent Pitchfork feature. "Why do I dream so often of his body/ When his body will decay?" Cox wonders in a wiry tenor, adding, "You were my god in high school." Just when Deerhunter seem most ready to take us into their confidence, otherworldly Sonic Youth whorls drown the singer's words, his trusty delay pedal lifting the song to an open-ended conclusion.
Fluorescent Grey's taut compositions simmer with the doomed purity of Deerhunter's romantic vision. "In the world there are so many useless bodies," Cox sings on midtempo "Dr. Glass", listing as examples "all the couples kissing, the children missing, the corpses rotting." His voice here is measured, accompanied by restrained organ-like loops, plus the usual guitar, bass, and drums. The closest thing on the EP to the chaos of Cryptograms' first third is high-school kiss reminiscence "Wash Off", which relies on droning motorik bass and treated vocal textures similar to those on the full-length's title track. "I was 16," Cox repeats, his reserve finally shattering in an inspired racket.
At the most basic level, what makes Deerhunter so profoundly affecting is the band's joy at rocking the fuck out-- free of both irony and any self-conscious lack thereof-- within their songs' impressive intellectual and emotional framework. "Like New" distills this energy into little more than two minutes, its dissolute guitars revolving around a deceptively soothing refrain. "Back to the crypt again," Cox intones. The CD version of Fluorescent Grey (as opposed to the vinyl side included in the Cryptograms double-LP release) also includes the hypnotic video for "Strange Lights", bringing Deerhunter's current phase neatly full circle: Ashes to ashes, and then wake up all over again.
