Deerhunter: "Nothing Ever Happened"

It’s amusing to recall Cryptograms (2007) in light of Deerhunter’s current incarnation; more amusing, still, to hear “Nothing Ever Happened” and hear so brilliantly actualised the big, dreaming pop song this band took pains to avoid.

It’s clear, now, that out-and-out hostility never suited them. Its weightiness and awkward, lumbering movements always seemed to imply a kind of deceit. In locating the inbred expanse that lurked, peacefully, at the heart of their psyche-outs, Deerhunter has begun to find the kind of self-definition and calm-control dispersal that conclusively fits, and envelopes its ozone-blue ambiguity. Microcastle succeeds in eliminating the allusion from its songs. “Nothing Ever Happened” is the pointed, standout result: a monster of sheer, warring ambiguity, it is, rightly or wrongly, their great big pop song or the big flanking terminus of melody that’s going to annoy as many people as it actively incites.

Because, all the same, the Deerhunter “sound”—that big, bleeping strategem of distress—remains as calculated and cosmically indebted as ever. This is the same band, figure-wise, that released the brooding, limitless “Hazel St.” In its fickle august rush, “Nothing Ever Happened” betrays little of the former song’s dreamy lightness, its gazing morbidity, but adds the cold sense of something moving unimpeded. It’s hard to get “lost” here: the song is a relentless, near-perfect succession of hooks. Moving from jangle-pop to sudden celebrity, and then breakdown, it works insomuch as it distracts. Which is not to suggest, or carp, or retract on the (inadequate) praise that will be inevitably levelled at the band, or leavered come its split. The good thing about “Nothing Ever Happened” is it doesn’t take itself too seriously.