Pitchfork

You might not be aware that there's this band we like called Deerhunter. Between news of their North American tour and upcoming appearance at the Pitchfork Music Festival party in Austin, their recent "Guest List" feature (in which frontman Bradford Cox reveals his true and boundless love for "Tetris", Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, and "bad-ass Tiffany lamps"), and the Best New Music entry that's been pushing top position for more than two weeks, even we're starting to get a little exasperated. And then we get a track like this.

Yesterday we reported that the band is readying a new EP as a sort of supplement to Cryptograms this April. Titled Fluorescent Grey, the disc consists of entirely new material, all set to tape while they were mixing the full-length. Among the EP's four tracks lies the airy, spacious dream-pop number "Like New".

MP3: > Deerhunter: "Like New"
[from Fluorescent Grey EP; due 04/09/07 on Kranky]

Though clocking in at just over two minutes, there's enough attention to sonic detail here to have warranted at least five or six. Among translucent guitars, graceful piano, and Bradford Cox's reverb-submerged tenor lies a beautifully glassy refrain that carries the song to its restful close-- not that you can make out a word of it.

"Like New" isn't so much a progression as a refinement of Deerhunter's transcendental space-rock. And even if the EP's press release insists it doesn't necessarily point to the direction of whatever stylistic evolution lies in store for the group, any band that puts this much care and consideration into a two-minute track on an appendix to an album just barely out of its shrinkwrap isn't planning on going soft any time soon.