Landlocked For Too Many Weeks

Deerhunter “Dream Captain”

Deerhunter usually occupies a very dark and lonely emotional space, but “Dream Captain” is kind of an outlier – it’s not a goof or anything, but there’s a touch of levity and humor to its tone and lyrics. But still, despite that, it’s treading familiar thematic ground – Bradford is giving voice to a passive character who desperately wants this powerful alpha male to come along and pull him out of his life. There’s a notable tension between the way he sees himself, and how he imagines this guy, and it all comes out in the song’s funniest and also most resonant line – “I’m a boy-man, and you’re a MAN-MAN!” It’s a self-deprecating joke, but it seems to dig a bit deeper into serious self-loathing, or at least a feeling of frustration about the sort of masculinity he can’t inhabit.

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