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Cox Rocks on Parallax

By Nate Schieber on November 13, 2011 in mp3blog

Bradford Cox makes it look easy. Last year, his band Deerhunter released Halcyon Digest, which Spin ranked the second best album of 2010 (third according to Pitchfork), and now, he puts out what will surely be one of 2011's top releases: Parallax. It's his third studio album under the moniker Atlas Sound, which started as a side project to Deerhunter but has bloomed into its own, full-grown, musical force. Parallax represents the pinnacle of Atlas Sound; the culmination of years of maturation, from noisy, reverberated soundscapes to a more distilled, purified style of songwriting. The songs are crisp, stripped-down, and well orchestrated. They demonstrate Cox's gift for combining countless influences to create something totally new yet comfortingly familiar. Each one relies on turning and bending something simple into something original and unforgettable, and Cox does it effortlessly. If Logos represented Atlas Sound's creative adolescence, Parallax marks its ease into adulthood. The kinks have been smoothed and anything unnecessary has been removed. What's left is a stylish and refined version of what Cox has been doing all along.

The album opens, with the etherial, "The Shakes." Out of feedback and noise an acoustic guitar surfaces before Cox's voice crawls out and delivers the words, "I found money and fame, but I found them really late." He recognizes his success but at the same time looks on the darker side, a common occurrence in Cox's lyrics (see: "Attic Lights", "Shelia", "My Halo", "Quarantined", "Bite Marks"). This tainted happiness runs throughout the album coloring it in an air of nostalgia and melancholy. For example, the album's first real show stopper comes at track three, "Te Amo," where Cox croons, "You can come around when you're down. You're always down," over an ever-moving background of pianos and pitch-shifted percussion. The rhythm continually falls over itself, switching between piano sixteenth notes and syncopated high-hat hits, and juxtaposes brilliantly with Cox's dreamy vocals.

Next is the title track where tremolo-electric-guitar hits and a walking bass line meander under electro noise. Cox seems to sit back and let the song unfold in front of him before starting, "Give me pain. Give me bruises," which are later paralleled with, "Give me love. Give me promises." Over a four-chord progression he explores the depths of his self-destructive psyche before resolving, in the chorus, "Your pain is probably equal." At the end, the song spirals out into a blanket of frustrated noise but before you know it the next song, "Modern Aquatic Nightsongs" has started. It's a smooth, shimmery, laid-back semi-ballad reminiscent of Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song". It's the first slow song on the album, yet it fits perfectly in the mix. Every song does.

On Parallax, nothing feels forced or contrived. Cox relies on his creativity do the talking and the result is a highly varied yet coherent and fluid album. Bright upbeat tracks, like "Mona Lisa" bleed into dark, religious-imagery-filled tunes like "Praying Man", which then die down into positively sedated, ambient reflections like "Doldrums" before the cycle starts again. Parallax is full of twists and turns that are neither expected nor jarring. Cox's skill lies in subtlety. He is able to create a texture and mood to each song and then bend it just enough to keep you interested but never enough so that you notice it (at least on the first listen).

Personally, I've always thought Cox akin to Christopher Owens (from the band Girls). They both write songs that, when you first hear them, sound like they could have been written by any number of people, like you've heard them before. But nothing could be further from the truth. No one could have made Parallax other than Bradford Cox and this irrepeatability, coupled with Cox's shear artistic ability, is what makes it so incredible. Critics and hardcore Atlas Sound fans may feel that Cox has betrayed his noise-rock roots, but he's simply built upon it, incorporating more and more influences. His songs have grown to transcend any particular genre and Parallax is the culmination of this process. Put simply, Bradford Cox makes it look easy.

Angel Is Broken
Te Amo

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Cox Rocks on Parallax