Deerhunter - “Helicopter”
The official video for this song is a nice representation of Deerhunter’s work in general. There are innocuous things that everyone likes—grainy footage of trees and clouds and birds and water—but there are also disturbing things underneath like people fighting, vomiting, and close-ups of insects writhing around. Behind everything is the band’s frontman, the hard shadows highlighting his bony cheeks and intimate gaze. Deerhunter are a band for whom attraction and repulsion are in constant flux.
I like how they make guitars into other things here, too. Tinny acoustic strings play that tinkling little riff until they become a harpsichord and the somber march of the chorus gets run through a whammy bar until it liquefies. Cox gets emotive, but it feels to me like they’re having a lot more fun playing with the textures they’ve created, running them through their fingers and swirling them all together. As our cultural landscape becomes ever more crowded with Nostalgia, these guys sound like kids in a sandbox.
