I Keep No Company

Deerhunter @ Webster Hall 10/15/2010

Desire Lines / Hazel Street / Never Stops / Memory Boy / Rainwater Cassette Exchange / Don’t Cry / Revival / Little Kids / Fountain Stairs / Nothing Ever Happened / Helicopter / He Would Have Laughed // Basement Scene / Spring Hall Convert / Fluorescent Grey

I should have written about this show after I saw it, rather than waiting a few days. I don’t remember enough of the specifics — there was a lot of awful things on my mind during the event, and the following days were busy and off on a different tangent. I can tell you that Deerhunter played very well, and that I think the live arrangements for the newer songs are quite good, particularly “Rainwater Cassette Exchange,” “Helicopter,” and “Revival.” I remember the audience being kinda lame — a lot of dickish young NYU guys spoiling the crowd, basically — and the energy level for “Nothing Ever Happened,” a song I’ve seen inspire actual moshing, being low to virtually non-existent. I didn’t mind that so much, I wasn’t in the mood for it either. I connected with the songs that were on my wavelength at that moment — “He Would Have Laughed,” “Helicopter,” “Memory Boy,” “Rainwater,” “Never Stops.” The sad songs, the mournful songs, the songs about endless frustration.

Deerhunter “Helicopter”

The liner notes of Halcyon Digest preface the lyrics of “Helicopter” with an excerpt written by Dennis Cooper that provides context for the words. Basically, the song is about a young gay Russian boy named Dima who fell into pornography and prostitution, and eventually was sold into sexual slavery to an organized crime figure. His ultimate fate is unknown, but one account had him dying after being pushed out of a helicopter over a remote forest in northern Russia. Anyway, it’s very hard to unlearn that context — suddenly every line of the song becomes unbearably sad, even the bits that were already painfully melancholy. The music is gorgeous, one of the most brilliantly crafted pieces of Bradford Cox’s career to date, and it perfectly conveys this feeling of frailty and powerlessness, and total doom. When Cox sings “now they are through with me,” it’s sweet and fragile and utterly devoid of hope. It’s terminal passivity.

Buy it from Amazon.