Pitchfork

Welcome to the latest edition of Pitchfork's Guest List. Each week, we ask one of our favorite artists to fill us in on what they've been up to lately: which tracks they can't stop spinning, what books they can't put down, and what new bands they've caught on tour. This week it's Bradford Cox from Deerhunter, who recalls his sixth-grade passion for the Breeders, discusses the joys of thrift store shopping in the south, and assures us that he's not on heroin.

>> Favorite New Songs of the Past Year

Klimek: "Ruined in a Day (Buenos Aires)"
It's on the Kompakt Pop Ambient 2007 compilation. It's really melancholy; it doesn't really rely on any beats or anything constant. It just works for me. I don't really know what makes certain types of ambient music like that stick out to me, and some of it is just kind of forgettable. But it's a pretty memorable song; it's really evocative of-- it's kind of desert-like actually.


El Perro del Mar: "I Can't Talk About It"
Moses, my drummer, told me about it. I just like the sound of it. It doesn't sound overly theatrical or kitschy, but it's still really authentic and nostalgic-sounding. I really like the vocals, the doo-wop style. I'm really into older, doo-wop harmonizing.

Liars: "Hold You, Drum"
One of the coolest things about playing with [Liars] was watching them play that song every night. Aaron [Hemphill] constructed that song in a really weird way, starting out with these loops on a four-track of just viola and stuff. He actually brings the four-track, lays it on his snare drum, and plays it live through his amp. It's kind of this layered drone that he built out of four tracks, and he can add or subtract elements using the faders. It's an intriguing pop song. It's oddly cute and disturbing.

>> Favorite Older Songs at the Moment

The Breeders: "Mad Lucas" and "Divine Hammer"
The reason I put them together is because they are sequenced together on the CD. [Last Splash] was the first CD I ever bought on my own. I was in sixth grade, and I would just sit and listen to it constantly. "Mad Lucas" is an extremely creepy, hissy, muffled, almost hallucination song that just kind of fizzles out at the end. But then "Divine Hammer" is total nostalgic, bouncy pop music. And the way it's sequenced is so effective. When I was in sixth grade, I didn't know how to describe how music worked, but it just freaked me out; I remember it used to give me chills. The intro to "Divine Hammer" is my favorite intro to any song, ever. It just takes me back in time, and I think it even did back then, because the sound is so retro-- it sounds like it has everybody's memories who has ever liked rock'n'roll attached to it.

Pavement: "Fight This Generation"
It's the quintessential Pavement song. It's got a suggestion of something going on emotionally at the beginning-- it sounds kind of fragile. Malkmus uses that voice that's not quite falsetto, but it makes you think that all this nonsense he's saying is actually pretty important. But then it just collapses into this ridiculous, totally absurd parody on punk anthems. But it still sounds fucking awesome. The guitars sound so cool—they're a little bit discordant, but still driving. That song really gets me off; I listen to it a lot.

Quickspace: "Gloriana"
I almost wanted to make this my favorite song ever, based on how many times I've listened to it: I've probably listened to it more than any other song. I don't know much about the history of Quickspace, except that [Tom Cullinan] was in Th' Faith Healers, and they were on Matador. The first time I heard this song, I was in the car on the way home from school with a friend, smoking a joint. It was playing on the college radio station, and it just flipped me out. It represents everything I like about music. That song is really influential on how I write songs. I really enjoy its structure: Instead of having a verse-chorus-verse, it has this Part A, and then a Part B that just repeats for infinity. At the end of the song, where they're chanting "Gloriana" over and over, I could listen to that forever.

>> Favorite Song Ever

The Velvet Underground: "Heroin"
It's so easy to misinterpret why I say this. I've been revising my "favorite song" choice since I was 10 years old, when it was C+C Music Factory's "Everybody Dance Now". The first thing I want to say is, I have never done heroin in my entire life. I get that a lot, because of the way I look-- I'm really, really thin and kind of gaunt. People constantly offer me heroin after shows, and they just assume that I'm a heroin addict. So me picking this song is obviously not going to ease anything-- but I just want to say that I don't need to do heroin because of that song. It's a combination of a lullaby and something way weirder, creepier, more dissonant. It combines a really lulling, hypnotic pop song with this wailing, screeching, banshee noise. It's really cathartic.

>> Favorite New Band

No Age
They're from L.A. It's these dudes who used to be in a band called Wives, which is a hardcore band. And if there's one thing I really hate, it's hardcore. I'm totally not into that kind of music. But I always liked Wives, because they did it with a certain sense of humor that I liked. What they're doing now is a duo-- Wives were a three-piece-- and they're really interesting. I'd say it's in the realm of ambient garage rock. It's got pop melodies and structure; it's not just experimental equipment-based music. I think they use drones and tape loops in a way that works really well with more conventional songs.

>> Best Recent Show

I was in L.A. recently, and my friend Barr called me up and asked me if I wanted to go see Peaches, and honestly I didn't really want to. But I went, and it was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. Her sense of humor is hilarious.

She was actually throwing guitars 30 feet in the air, and her roadies were running around catching them. She has this bad-assness that I really dig about her, like Al Pacino or something. She walks around like she's going to point at you and shout, "What the fuck!" So this roadie comes up and straps a guitar around her, reaches from behind her, and puts both of his arms under hers. Then another roadie from across the stage throws a bottle of water at her, she rips the lid off the bottle of water, and while the other roadie is standing behind her playing a solo on the guitar that's strapped to her body, she drinks an entire bottle of water. Then she threw the bottle of water into the audience, grabbed the guitar and threw it 30 feet into the air, and another roadie ran and caught it. It was insane.

>> Last Great Film I Saw

Pedro Almodovar: Bad Education
It is my single favorite movie that I've ever seen.

>> Last Great Book I Read

Alain-Fournier: Le Grand Meaulnes
It's the tale of this teenage boy who runs away from a boarding school. It does the teenage boy melancholy, the fading youth thing really well. It's really enchanting, the way it's told. It's not fairy tale-ish, but there's a kind of magical realism to it.

>> Favorite Piece of Musical Equipment

DigiDelay
I use this thing, a delay pedal called the DigiTech DigiDelay. I use it for everything. If I had to have one [instrument] to make music with, it would be that. I've used it on every vocal I've ever done. It's also the source of a lot of sounds on our record that people didn't realize-- the entire first track ["Intro"] is done on one. That's just my voice; there's no keyboards on the majority of that track. There's one keyboard part at the end, but that's it. All the loops are my voice. And a lot of the sounds on "Octet" are my voice looped through this thing. It has a really cool additive way of making loops. Everybody in Deerhunter has one. Every single person in the band, after seeing me use it, was like, "I have to have one of those." It's the one thing we all have in common.

>> Favorite Record Store

Low Yo Yo Stuff, Athens, Georgia
It's run by this guy named Todd, who is really cool. I've known him since I was nine, because I used to go into that store and raise hell when I was really little. My mom would be getting her hair done in downtown Athens, and she would let me run wild downtown. One time when I was about 11, I knocked a Jolt Cola over the entire Fall section. His store used to be based in front of the 40 Watt Club in Athens, but now he's moved to the Atlanta suburbs. But [Todd] is really nice; we've had kind of a love-hate relationship since I was nine. We're friends now. He sells some really insane shit. The last thing I bought there was Gong's record Angel's Egg.

>> Best Purchase of the Past Year

I went to this thrift store in Marietta, and I got this bad-ass Tiffany lamp with a dragonfly design in the stained glass. I really like old stained glass lamps, I have no idea why. But I got that and this fucking insane vintage pearloid yellow drum kit. And my grand total that day was $17. It was totally unexpected too. I saw the drum kit in the window, and I totally expected it to be-- you know how thrift stores will get a shitty Casio keyboard these days and charge $35?-- so I'm expecting them to tell me the drums are $500 or something: "We know what these go for on eBay! We have a computer you know!" So I go back there and ask how much it is, and she was like, "Oh, I don't know, $25." And then I went back in and found that lamp, and I almost shit myself. And then I went to check out, and it turns out it was half-off day. So I got a drum set for 12 bucks!

>> Best Thing I Did This Year

Definitely touring Europe and the U.S. with Liars, and touring the southeastern U.S. with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Liars are my favorite people I've ever met playing music. And the Yeah Yeah Yeahs too, playing with them really made me a fan.

>> Favorite Music Venue

Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta
We basically almost live there. We can't practice, because we can't really afford to get a space, so we just play shows at Drunken Unicorn. That's what we do instead of practicing. If we want to write a song, we say, "Let's play a show at the Drunken Unicorn and try it there." It's definitely the place in Atlanta that we feel most at home. The people who run it are like family to us. The guy that books it, Randy, is fucking awesome. He's like the Todd P. of Atlanta.

>> Favorite TV Show at the Moment

"Curb Your Enthusiasm"
It's funny as shit. And "Arrested Development" is really funny, too. The only TV I watch is on DVDs that I steal from Moses. I got all the seasons of "The Adventures of Pete and Pete," and I cannot believe how amazing that show is: All the weird things they snuck in there, like Ann Magnuson, the singer of Bongwater, is in an episode.

>> Favorite Video Game

Do they still make "Tetris?" I would play that if I was to play a video game. I used to have a "Tetris" keychain game that I would play at school, and hide it under my desk.

>> Favorite Radio Program

WREK 91.1 FM, Atlanta
It's Georgia Tech's college station. They are fucking freaks, and they play really bizarre free form sets. If I'm going to listen to radio, that's what I'm going to put on. In the middle of the night, they have just free form DJs playing stuff like Charlemagne Palestine and then the Ramones and then Doc Boggs all in a row. And it always works.

>> My Ringtone

My phone came with Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie", but then I got sick of it because everybody at work was complaining about it. So I just put it on vibrate. But my co-worker has the coolest ringtone in the world: It's a cat rapping from a Checker's fast food commercial. If I could have any ringtone, that would be it.