Pitchfork

As frontman Bradford Cox tells it, Deerhunter's first session at Brooklyn's Rare Book Room Studio wound up sounding like "Loveless on mushrooms." No, not in a good way. Cox and his fellow Atlanta psych-rockers have come up with something much more substantial this time. New Deerhunter song "After Class", slated for inclusion on the just-launched Rare Book Room Records' forthcoming RBR 001 compilation, extends the pop-ward drift and insistent thrum of the quintet's fantastic Fluorescent Grey EP.

That doesn't mean Deerhunter have renounced their noisier tendencies. The song comes on like a gentle wave, with Sgt. Pepper's-like drums marching around steady, translucent guitar figures and disembodied chimes. Cox's sighing tenor floats to the surface, playfully invoking the Righteous Brothers: "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm gone, gone, gone." Midway through, the wave reaches a crest of swirling feedback, vocal delay, and other immersive effects, until Cox commands, "Strip down, strip down," and the song comes back to shore-- its wayward protagonist seemingly still adrift.

Stream:> Deerhunter: "After Class"
[from RBR 001; due soon from Rare Book Room]