03/10/12: Deerhunter - Cryptograms (2007)

03/10/12: Deerhunter - Cryptograms (2007)

1. Intro
2. Cryptograms
3. White Ink
4. Lake Somerset
5. Providence
6. Octet
7. Red Ink
8. Spring Hall Convert
9. Strange Lights
10. Hazel St.
11. Tape Hiss Orchid
12. Heatherwood

     I have owned this album for a long time. It was a random purchase due to all of the raving I heard about this band and album at the time but I never gave this album much of a chance. Deerhunter is a indie rock band that also falls into other genres like noise rock, shoegaze, ambient and post-rock just to name a few. "Cryptograms" is a surprisingly inconsistent album because of how it was recorded. They recorded both halves of the album during 2 separate day long sessions that were months apart and because of that fact, the first and second halves of the album are completely different. The first half is mostly instrumental and very ambient and had some of my favorite tracks. The second half had a more poppy vocal feel with more traditional song structures. Its almost as if they had recorded 2 EPs and released them together as one album.
     Overall I didn't love this album. The first half was the highlight for me because I enjoyed their ambient and more experimental stuff much more than the shoegazey second half. I could have enjoyed the more straightforward stuff a bit more if I liked the singers voice a bit more. The ambient tracks were really interesting and used a lot of tape looping and synth etc. Once the second half kicked in I became a little more bored with it. Shoegaze as a genre is very hit or miss to me. There were a couple tracks with singing that i din't mind but I just don't think this band is really my cup of tea. Maybe I'll just check out some of their later albums later on to see if I like what they did later better than this. (070)