Over the past couple of years, I have made countless irrelevant analogies, pretentious statements, contentious contradictions and flat out dick-moves. Not only that, but I’ve spent some years as a music director, columnist, on-air personality, public speaker and all-around attention whore. The reason is that I have always believed that I was an interesting case study for humanity.
In my head, when I played “truth time” or made a spectacle/ass of myself, people would read or hear or see me and come to the conclusion that I am an interesting and poignant individual who is worth spending some time with. Spending countless hours reading romantic poetry and being super introspective, I thought I was discovering universal truths that would somehow deviate from the banal cliches crammed down our throats by everybody else. But it was really just a bunch of bullshit.
Just because I feel any sort of way about anything doesn’t mean that that’s the way it is (Oh my god, look at me teaching you people things you didn’t already know). My personal experiences do not and cannot match yours, and that’s why whatever I have to say about experience doesn’t help anybody.
What I’m trying to say here is that introspection is masturbation. That’s why, I’ve just now decided, I didn’t like “Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel,” the debut LP by Atlas Sound, but really enjoyed “Logos,” the second LP by Atlas Sound and the solo project of Deerhunter frontman, Bradford Cox.
“Logos,” as Cox himself explains, is a more collaborative effort that deviates away from his “last album [which] was a bedroom laptop type thing. Very introverted.” Recorded in studios and homes around the world, “Logos” moves away from the autobiographical nature of “Let the Blind Lead” and seems to be acknowledging the world outside of himself. Songs like “Walkabout,” which features Noah Lennox, more popularly known as Panda Bear of Animal Collective, are way more upbeat and positive while still holding on to the haunting and depressing things about life.
“Logos,” on a purely sonic level, is an absolutely beautiful and sprawling masterpiece that starts off with “The Light That Failed,” a repetitive but intriguing track that expands, pours, shuffles, blooms, blossoms, etc. from plain laptop-pop to panoramic instrumentation, whatever the hell that means. The vocals are fuzzed to give it a dreamy effect, but still clear enough to follow the lyrics and plenty enjoyable.
It is perfectly clear by this album that Bradford Cox has “become bored with introspection.” His album doesn’t just speak about him and assume that he speaks for all. Instead, he has opened up to the world around him, has collaborated and has even let others interpret and rearrange his own creation (I am referring to “Quick Canal,” which was originally a fifteen-minute-long instrumental turned into a nine-minute-long song with vocals by Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab). So whether or not this was a pedantic and useless article that was just masturbatory gobbledygook or not, you should definitely give the album a listen.