ATLAS SOUND - Logos

When we first encountered Bradford Cox, it was as the then-confrontational frontman of fledgling indie upstarts Deerhunter. After a debut album that featured a naked dude with a deer mask and the word "faggot" in its title, it seemed easy to peg Cox as a musician far more interested in getting a reaction than making terribly compelling music, and so it may have been at the time, but one full-length, two EPs, and an absolutely stellar double album later, Deerhunter has become one of America's best underground bands.

Tellingly, Cox's only "act" today is that of a sort of modern rock anthropologist. Deerhunter's music carefully archives some of the most powerful sounds of underground music—shoegaze, lo-fi, punk, kraut—and recontextualizes them as new songs. So what does all of this have to do with Cox's solo project, Atlas Sound? It, too, takes a very important movement in indie music—bedroom 4-track albums—and projects it through an updated lens. Clearly no one's recording on old cassette tapes anymore, but that ramshackle, accidental spirit lives on here. Logos cozies gauzy loops up against broken down lullabies and suburban skateboarder blues, occasionally allowing moments of giddy joy to burst the album wide open. And even though the record's two most potent moments are its guest appearances (Panda Bear on "Walkabout" and Laetitia Sadier on "Quick Canal"), this is no self-indulgent solo slouch. Cox is steadily proving that it won't be long before he can place his name alongside those musical icons he so clearly reveres.