Band of the Week: Atlas Sound

What onlookers see as confrontational is perhaps just Cox being young, bold and impulsive, and these qualities make his music with Deerhunter so compellingly corrosive, and his Atlas Sound album such a dreamy alternative. Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel is 50 minutes of ambient beats and synth drones, servicing songs that fade in and out unannounced. It’s “more of a bedroom effort,” Cox says, “more dreamy and introverted and maybe less overstated or heavy handed.” Yet, for all its unpredictability, Let the Blind is also highly accessible, with each song sustaining a larger mood while examining its different shades.

When Cox describes the album as a “bedroom effort,” he is being literal. Following the difficult birth of Cryptograms—which was recorded twice, once with Lubelski and again by the band members themselves—and lengthy supporting tours, Cox began recording his own songs by himself in his bedroom. “Recording the Atlas Sound record could not have been a more relaxed experience,” he recalls. “There was no pressure. I was left to my own devices to just create whatever.” Early in the process, he worked with Brian Foote (publicist for Cox's label, Kranky Records, and member of Chicago's Nudge), who helped Cox hone some of the recording techniques on Let the Blind. “Brian is rad,” Cox says. “He basically taught me how to make a computer sound like a four-track. He knew what I wanted to accomplish with this record.”

Appropriately for such an ethereal album, the title came to Cox in a dream: “I literally woke up laughing at how over-the-top it sounded,” he says. “It sounds like something from a fake Bible verse. It’s overly stated on purpose. To me it’s kind of funny.”

And yet, despite the inside-joke aspect, there’s a kernel of truth in it: The album's 14 songs emphasize feeling over knowledge, echoing Cox’s statements that he wanted Let the Blind to be “therapeutic.” “That’s one of those statements that I have a hard time explaining,” he says. “It’s sort of abstract. Music has always been healing and ‘therapeutic’ to me. It distracts you from your problems and anxieties. I guess I’d like to think maybe younger kids, like troubled adolescents or something, would hear it and relate to it and it would help them in some way cope with some situation in their lives.”

Threading the album together is a recurring theme of metamorphosis, as songs change shape and direction organically and unexpectedly, each track bleeding into the next. The music never sounds settled, and translating it to a live setting has unsettled it even more. Currently touring for Let the Blind, Cox has assembled a “real raw” full band for the road. “It’s like a garage band covering an electronic album I just want to focus on the more pop-oriented sides of the songs. I don’t want there to be sleeping bags in the mosh pit or people staring at the ground reflecting on sadness or whatever.

“I feel like I have transformed from a juvenile delinquent, albeit an artsy one, into maybe a more mature adult over the last 12 months of devoting all my time and energy to music,” Cox concludes. “I don’t really relate, at this point, to what I was doing just months ago. I see pictures of me in dresses, with like fake blood and stuff, and think, ‘Man, what was I thinking?’”

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