Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox Wants You to Enjoy Humanity’s Plunge into Chaos
Deerhunter lead singer Bradford Cox talks through the band's eighth studio album
Photo via 4AD
Bradford Cox is one of the last few provocateurs left in indie rock. Though he likely wouldn’t fashion himself as a “provocateur” and his distaste for the term “indie rock” has been well-documented, the Deerhunter lead singer has never shied away from sharing his attention-grabbing opinions, but underlying it all is a genuine interest in big-picture ideas. Interviewing Cox is like participating in a mentally exhausting chess match with a jaded, skilled player, and his desire for an equally competent opponent is evident. It’s not hard to understand Cox’s default cynicism and general pessimism—towards the press, the streaming-driven music industry and a populace that’s too addicted to their phones to engage in the real world or too distracted to solve its problems—all of which is captured in Deerhunter’s new album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
This is the longest we’ve had to wait for a new Deerhunter record with their last album, Fading Frontier, dropping in 2015, but a lot has happened since then. Last year, their former bassist Josh Fauver, who had been a member of the group up until 2012, passed away, and over the past few years, various band members have been busy raising children. Throughout their near two decade-long career, the Atlanta band has dabbled in avant-garde recordings as well as more approachable rock music, and Fading Frontier represented a pivot to the latter, though it still contained the strange ambient flourishes we’ve come to expect from Deerhunter. Their new LP and eighth studio album, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, sweeps away any remaining traces of autobiographical writing and directs its focus towards humanity’s current predicament—all through a spacey sound and science-fiction-like lyrical bent. The album was co-produced by Cate Le Bon and according to Cox, it was her music’s “starkness and ugly beauty” that left its mark on this record.
When I call Cox for our interview, he’s shopping at a Goodwill thrift store, which he visits multiple times a day. “I found a 1930’s art deco porcelain vase and a pair of trousers from the ’40s,” says Cox. “I go to three or four Goodwills a day. It’s my hobby. I’m kind of a hoarder. It just accumulates. My kitchen counter is just a museum of fantastic objects. Everyone should realize our world has produced so much stuff and it’s so much more fun finding new ways to wear old things. It’s so much more fun than going to Target or some hideous, god forbid, H&M or something. Why would you choose that? Why would you choose new garbage?” His thrifting hobby is the kind of stark rejection of modern life, which is increasingly mediated through the internet and filled with widespread greed and violence, that Cox also relays in his music. The opening harpsichord of “Death in Midsummer” is full of mirth and Cox even proclaims, “Cast your fears aside,” but then the lyrics take a turn for the worst (“Walk around and you’ll see what’s fading”). If you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics on this record, you might miss its entire dystopian premise. The last half of “No One’s Sleeping” has some of the most euphoric keyboard riffs you’ll ever hear, but the song’s subject doesn’t actually warrant a triumphant shout of hurrah. In the track’s beginning half, Cox sings, “In the country there’s much duress / Violence has taken hold,” and the keyboard passage that follows signifies a glorious, soothing surrender to the doom has engulfed humanity.
“I find the record to be unrelentingly bleak,” says Cox. “To the point where I almost feel bad about it when I play if for my parents. There’s a weird feeling of ‘Sorry dad.’” The album cover is a black and white etching by German artist Peter Ackermann, and in it, you can literally see the foggy despair that’s devoured humankind. Rather than Cox seeking out this piece of art for the album cover, the Ackermann piece literally fell at his feet. Cox explains, “I had laryngitis in the studio in Los Angeles and I called my doctor and I said ‘What am I going to do, I’m on a very strict deadline and I don’t know what to do. I can’t sing. I’m in a quite precarious situation.’ [The doctor said,] ‘Well, you’re going to have to definitely, completely rest your voice,’ so he sent me out of the studio and I went to a really good book store in Los Angeles. This book fell off the shelf, I was trying to reach for something else and I went down to get it and it fell open to a page. This is a true story. It’s happened numerous times so people start to question whether or not I’m mythologizing because it’s a very similar story of how I stumbled upon the cover of Halcyon Digest. I think it’s all part of improvisation. The Peter Ackermann book I never heard of. It was an incredibly difficult process tracking it down because the book was entirely in German, so I had to get to label to help me contact his estate. I would not stop. I was like, ‘This is the album cover.’ I just can’t imagine another cover.”
The album’s futuristic sound isn’t a mistake. You won’t hear the garage rock tendencies of their past work, particularly in songs like the contorted “Detournement” or the eerie “Tarnung.” In the liner notes, you’ll find the phrase, “Nostalgia is toxic,” scrolled under the track title, “Futurism.” “What I would specifically speak against is the kind of attitude that the best has already happened,” says Cox. “I mean I certainly think the worst is where we are. There’s a lot of people, especially when you look at cultural criticism, you see a lot of people that act as if the best thing we could do now is to create a reproduction of what’s happened in the past. As an artist, I find that incredibly discouraging. If the greatest thing I could hope to do is create something that barely competes with much more important work from the past, I’d rather just pick another profession.”