Bradford Cox’s Deerhunter have been critical darlings since their 2005 debut Cryptograms. After misfiring with Microcastle, the band stormed back this year with Halcyon Digest. Unfortunately, the beautiful textures of the new songs didn’t quite translate to a dusty field. Rather, the band appeared to be trying to muscle its way through the crowd.. and instead they wound up sounding a bit too much like a derivatively boring arena rock band at times. Nonetheless, when things clicked, they really clicked and showed why they are deserving of all the praise. Let’s just not do this in a field next time.
