Album Review: Deerhunter - Monomania

Deerhunter's latest LP Monomania begins with some lo-fi kraut and noise tracks heavy on delay and reverb, suddenly puts on the brakes at The Missing and reverts back to something in-between by track four. This formula is sustained the entire album, which fits the title well (monomania: a mild form of 'partial insanity' and a reference to singer Bradford Cox's persona). The familiar sense of a thinking person's music trying to be passed off as pop is also ever-present, with chief songwriter Cox constantly giving into impulse to bend and twist songs despite his penchant for a hook, giving the songs a uniqueness that doesn't really sound like anything else other than Deerhunter music. Furthermore, once you do eventually get over that unique melody inherent in each track – and it always seems to be happening in the background – you start to take note of the words, and that's another journey in itself.

Back behind the dials is producer Nicolas Vernhes, who also pushed buttons on the brilliant Microcastle, and according to reports the album was recorded to 8-track, which isn't always obvious, but there is more a sense of guitarist and sometime producer Lockett Pundt trying to impress on the album his time spent producing the odd Black Lips song.

Listening to Monomania a number of times, you'll get a sense of its longevity and there's something different to take note of each time. Deerhunter has continued to evolve throughout their 12-year history and even though that evolution has been incremental during their six-record existence and occasional membership changes (the current crew has been together for a while now but they have changed the bass player for this album) here the band continue to persuade with this little unpredictable joy.