When I call Bradford Cox at his home in Atlanta, it’s a full
15 minutes before we start talking about his first release as Atlas
Sound. He’s gracious and apologetic, but puts me on hold to seal the
deal on a Korg microsynth he found on craigslist. When he gets back on
the line, he tells me how he’s compulsively purchasing instruments,
even though he’s “totally broke,” but then his psychiatrist calls and
I’m back on hold. Ten minutes pass and he returns, promising the
interview won’t be interrupted again—”unless my mom calls.”
And so, unwittingly, Cox spills his guts on the three impulses that
have earmarked his nascent musical career: the rigorously creative, the
sensationally psychotic, and the nakedly vulnerable. Last year, his
band, Deerhunter, issued two of the year’s most visceral records: the
LP Cryptograms and the EP Fluorescent Grey. Fusing
to-the-point garage rock with hallucinatory atmospherics, the band
sculpted a sound that reeled from violently manic to feather soft. But
much of the attention the band received had nothing to do with the
music. The band became as famous for dead-end recording sessions,
emotional meltdowns, and Cox’s provocative live persona—which has
seen him perform in sundresses and smeared with fake blood. But talking
to Cox, a gentler, more introspective voice emerges.
“I’m not really happy in my personal life and I’d rather just go off
and be on my own, alone in the woods or something, and record,” he
admits. “Obviously, when you record something, you’re recording it for
an audience. I’m not trying to make all these basement tapes that
nobody’s ever going to hear. But I want to get to the point where I can
record music and have it be heard and appreciated by a receptive
audience—without having to beg, writhe around on the ground, or
make a freak show just to get people to listen.”
A similarly personal sentiment haunts Let the Blind Lead Those
Who Can See but Cannot Feel, his first release as Atlas Sound, a
solitary recording project he claims he began at age 10. Untouched by
other contributors and given to indulging idiosyncratic experiments,
the album is the sonic equivalent of an interior monologue, in which
flashes of clarity bubble up from a nebula of subconscious thought.
There is straightforward pop in “River Card” and “Ativan,” his paean to
anti-anxiety meds, but the majority of the album is dedicated to
ambient excursions that approximate emotion rather than adhere to any
conventional structure.
“I’ve never considered myself to be a traditional songwriter,” he
explains. “I consider myself to be a collagist. It’s not about the
process; it’s about the product.”
Given that aesthetic sensibility, the prospect of translating the
material to a live setting seemed unlikely. But Cox has assembled a
band, which includes Portlanders Adam Forkner (White Rainbow) and Honey
Owens (Valet), to do just that. According to him, the live presentation
streamlines the recorded versions by downplaying the electronic
elements and upping the garage rock quotient. Of course, that
assessment likely simplifies the combination of such far-out source
material with some of Portland’s most exploratory musicians. No wonder
Cox has dubbed the full-band arrangements as “psychedelic grunge
mysticism.”