The group began with the ambition of fusing the lulling hypnotic states induced by ambient and minimalist music with the klang and propulsion of garage rock. The band has weathered chaotic line-up changes and the death of a member.
Cryptograms was the second full-length offering from Deerhunter, and their first for Kranky. The album took almost two years to finish and was the product of emotional, physical, and financial strain on the group. The result is an album that finds the band shifting from discordant catharsis, and forming a sonic identity that completely expresses the place from which they have arrived. The first half of the album was recorded first unsuccessfully in 2005. These recordings were a blur at best, wordless and bordering on psychological atrophy. The sessions failed to provide anything tangible, and were racked with technical and personal problems, including out-of-tune pianos, panic attacks, and a tape machine that seemed to fail to capture the full spectrum of ambience the band was exploring.
The band returned home, having failed, and considered giving up. The idea arose to give it one last shot and exactly one year from the date of the recording of their first self-titled LP at a small studio in rural Georgia, they returned to that same studio and plugged in. The session resulted in the first half of the record which was recorded in one day and completely filled the reel of tape they brought with them. Cryptograms’ first side begins with an introduction leading to the title track, and ends with the tape literally spinning off the end of the reel in the middle of a drone layered with bells and accordion (Red Ink). The second half of the record, also recorded in one day, in November of 2005, represents the band in an entirely different state. Spring Hall Convert opens with the line, “…so I woke up…” and introduces a set of focused psych-pop songs fixating on adolescence, illness, and failing connections.
On May 8, 2007, the group released the Fluorescent Grey EP, which was recorded in July 2006. This EP also garnered the title of "Best New Music" from Pitchfork Media. In the same month, the band released the Whirlyball 7" single, which was available at only one store in Atlanta, Georgia: Criminal Records. The single also acted as a ticket to a show, which featured the band along with The Carbonas, Selmanaires and The Coathangers. The single was available online for a limited time after the show due to popular demand, but only 200 copies were pressed, with 100 on black vinyl and 100 on clear vinyl.
The quartet's third album, Microcastle, came out in October of 2008 after being leaked accidentally in May. The physical release was accompanied by an album entitled Weird Era Cont.. They were both well-received, scoring a 9.2 and "best new music" on Pitchfork and taking the #1 slot for Tiny Mix Tapes' annual favorite albums list for 2008.
The band added guitarist Whitney Petty, a former sailor and high school friend of Cox's, to replace the departing Colin Mee in May 2008. She in turn left the band in February 2009.
The band followed up the critically acclaimed Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. set in May 2009 with an EP - Rainwater Cassette Exchange.
In September 2010, Deerhunter released Halcyon Digest on the label 4AD. The album received broad critical acclaim, including being rated #20 on the NME "50 Best Albums of 2010." Deerhunter made their US broadcast television debut on Conan, December 2, 2010, where they performed Helicopter.
Deerhunter released their sixth album, Monomania, in May 2013. It was their first album without bassist Josh Fauver, with Frankie Broyles and Josh McKay being added to the group. The Black Lips described the album as the "most punk album of the last 30 years."
On December 4, 2014, frontman Bradford Cox was seriously injured and hospitalized after being hit by a car in Atlanta. He has since described the incident as a “perspective-giving jolt” and cites the accident as a turning point for him in life. Deerhunter's seventh album, Fading Frontier, was released in October 2015. This was Cox's first musical output since the accident. The album also saw the departure of guitarist Frankie Broyles, who left the band to focus on his solo career.
In 2018, multi-instrumentalist Javier Morales was added as a permanent member, and the band embarked on a series of tour dates in the USA and Europe. Sold on this tour was a limited cassette-only release, Double Dream of Spring, comprised mainly of instrumental and experimental pieces. The band's eighth studio album, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?, followed in January 2019. Later in the year, a "12-minute opus" titled Timebends was released to streaming services as a one-off single. Partially improvised and laden with Cox's signature stream-of-consciousness lyricism, the track was "recorded live direct to tape and in one take with minimal overdubs and mastered using a completely analogue signal chain."
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Basement Scene
Deerhunter Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
A little dream
All about the basement scene
I don't want to wake up
I don't want to wake up
I don't want to wake up no
If you've seen
Come out tonight
And we'll get stoned
I don't want to get old
I don't want to get old
I don't want to get old no
Dream
A little dream
About your friends
And their endings
Now I wanna wake up
I wanna wake up
I wanna wake up now
It could be the death of me
Knowing that my friends
Will not remember me
I don't wanna get old
I wanna get old
I wanna get old
In the bluffs they know my name
In the bluffs they know
In the bluffs they know my name
In the bluffs they know
In the bluffs they know my name
In the bluffs they know
In the bluffs they know my name
"Basement Scene" is a dreamy song by Deerhunter that recounts a dream. It is about someone dreaming of a utopian-like underground scene where they can escape their fears and anxieties of getting older. The dreamer is reluctant to awaken, perhaps indicating a sense of nostalgia and the fear of the unknown. The basement scene represents a refuge where the characters can escape their mundane lives and indulge in activities they find significant, ultimately hoping to stay young forever.
The song's intro creates a dream-like state as a precursor to the impending fantasy-like narrative. The chorus is repeated several times over the course of the song, highlighting the dreamer's bittersweet longing for youth, while the verses touch upon the fear of growing old. The apostrophes towards the end of the song indicate the dreamer's shifting feelings about time and age. The chorus' final repetition evokes a sense of community, an acceptance of growing older, and the ephemeral nature of people and memories, as there seems to be an acknowledgment that people can't escape the inevitable passage of time.
Line by Line Meaning
Dream
The singer is engulfed in a dream state
A little dream
The dream state is insignificant
All about the basement scene
The dream is about a specific basement scenario
I don't want to wake up
The singer is content in this dream state and doesn't want to return to reality
If you've seen
The song now addresses an external entity who has seen something specific
The light turn gold
This gold light is the trigger for the event in the following lines
Come out tonight
The singer is inviting the external entity to meet with him or her
And we'll get stoned
The plan for the meet-up is to consume drugs
I don't want to get old
The singer doesn't want to grow older and leave this lifestyle behind
Dream
The singer is again dreaming
A little dream
The dream is again insignificant
About your friends
This dream is specifically about the singer's friends
And their endings
The dream involves the deaths of these friends
Now I wanna wake up
The singer no longer wants to be in this dream state
It could be the death of me
The singer is worried that this lifestyle could lead to his or her death
Knowing that my friends
The singer is reiterating the importance of the friends mentioned earlier
Will not remember me
The singer fears that if something were to happen, his or her friends would forget about them
I don't wanna get old
The singer doesn't want to grow older and leave this lifestyle behind
In the bluffs they know my name
The singer has developed a reputation in the area
In the bluffs they know
The singer is reiterating the previous line
In the bluffs they know my name
The singer's reputation has been well-established
Lyrics © WORDS & MUSIC A DIV OF BIG DEAL MUSIC LLC
Written by: BRADFORD COX
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind