Halcyon Digest - Deerhunter
Joint Society Review
Words by Ben Smith
Deerhunter’s 2010 dream pop album Halcyon Digest follows themes of memories and how time changes or creates them. The distortion and hazy production convey this well, and leads to a chill, atmospheric and ‘fuzzy’ listening experience. Some society members enjoyed this, describing the album as an ‘easy listen’, ‘dreamy’ and ‘calming’.
Bradford Cox, Deerhunter’s lead vocalist, explains how the album’s cover was chosen by fate. A book fell off his shelf and opened on a picture of Dennis Dinion from the Miss Star Lite Pageant. The picture ended up as a memorable cover for the album. However, though many would remember the image, some society members described the album itself as being half-forgettable, something playing in the background (which almost fits with the album’s themes of distorted memories).
This theme was something that appealed to Zaina, who chose the album.
In her words:
'It's about how time can cause us to warp memories or even invent new ones in order for us to digest and be comfortable with them.'
To advertise the release of the album, Deerhunter asked fans to give out fliers and then rewarded them with an unreleased track list and a copy of the artwork.
The psychedelic experience provided by Halcyon Digest seemed to begin calmly whilst building energy as it went along. One member saw the final track, He Would Have Laughed, as a summary of the whole album as it began and ended in a similar way.
No one had strong preference over whether they preferred the more calm songs or the more energetic songs, resulting in a relatively even split between which songs people favoured. The most popular tracks were Memory Boy and Desire Lines. Earthquake was one of the few songs disliked by some since many of the other tracks received no negative reviews. This may again be down to members simply not remembering the names of songs as they seemed to all sound ‘samey’.
Although not being strongly disliked by anyone, Halcyon Digest received fairly middling reviews from most, except for a few high scores from those who were already fans of the album. This resulted in an average score of 6.7/10 by the society.
A special thanks goes to Zaina for researching and speaking about the album!
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