Deerhunter – Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP [4 AD & Kranky]

A new EP by Deerhunter is always welcome round these parts and so soon after the fantastic Microcastle which even came with a bonus CD called Weired Era Cont. which was pretty much a whole new albums worth of material, is pretty good going even for a group of musicians this prolific. I managed to grab the tour only tape addition of Rainwater Cassete Exchange when they came round my neck of the woods recently, but the mp3’s are around to buy and the CD is on its way…

This is five tracks of brand new material and not unlike the Fluorescent Grey EP that came right after Crytograms could well show the development from the album before it to the next. It could well fit into the Microcastle scheme of things as it has a washed out retro girl group gone shoegaze feel to it much like a lot of that album yet it also stands out as something slightly different and maybe even more raw but that could be the tape hiss / quality giving me that vibe.

The biggest change in the sound is maybe the vocals, they seemed more buried in the mix compared to M-castle… the songs are also denser somehow. Title track Rainwater Cassette Exchange is probably the catchiest of the lot like a swamp rock rendition of a stax record drenched in reverb and raw gritty sounds, it easily stands up to a lot of other tracks by the band. The quick time shuffle of Disappearing Ink comes on like a fast My Bloody Valentine with less emphasis on noisy soundscapes and more on the tune it’s self. Side A is finished off with the super catchy Famous Last Words with a stomping driving rhythm and melodies that just sparkle.

On the B-side Game of Diamonds picks up where the others left off but with a more mellow feel, bongo like percussion meets acoustic guitars and piano before Bradford offers up some sweater vocal stylings to the raw deep in the mix efforts on the tracks before and after. Circulation sounds like a messy raw version of Nothing Ever Happens somehow with chopped up collages of speech and dense sounds it ends things in a woozy heat drenched fuzzed out bang.

The Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP is a quality addition to the growing Deerhunter back catalogue and shows a continuation and maybe even a slight development in sound from Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. We will have to wait and see what they come up with next I for one can’t wait.