Atlas Sound
Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
By Arianna Stern
Published: February 19th, 2008 | 12:00am
Listeners who come to Atlas Sound’s debut LP as fans of Deerhunter won’t be disappointed. The band’s frontman, Bradford Cox, loads up his solo debut with the same combination of psychedelia, melody, and rocknroll that makes Deerhunter resonate with so many music fans. Those who don’t know Deerhunter might first notice the record’s title, named for the closing track: Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. It’s cool, but on the other hand, it seems like he’s trying awfully hard.
The whole album has this same feel. It kicks off with “A Ghost Story,” which features a little kid struggling to narrate a ghost story, and hazy, church bell-like ringing. Along with “Small Horror,” a track with light, slow vocals over twinkling, ambient tones, these songs aim to spook or unsettle you but lack the subtlety necessary to do so. In the absence of Deerhunter’s nihilistic shredding, ambient looping doesn’t sound dissonant or unexpected. On the contrary. In fact, you might expect sonic experimentation, sometimes to the point of self-indulgence (as on the draggy “Winter Vacation”), on an album called Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel.
All the emphasis on the weirdness of the record poses a problem only when it distracts from the album’s halting beauty. “Recent Bedroom” and “Ativan” both touch on the shoegazer movement, totally derailing its pop foundation and veering into a more artistic domain. “Scraping Past” almost conforms to verse-chorus-verse, but uses sonic loops to keep it from turning predictable, like it’s simultaneously mocking conventional song structures and proposing a better way. The bits of melody, bells, and choral vocals dispersed throughout the album lure a listener into accepting loops and textures as music, in a way analogous to how Sonic Youth’s moments of straight-up rock recontextualize noise as music. But the ghost stories? Unfortunately, they just weigh the album down, breaking the spell cast by all that gorgeous, swirling guitar.
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