The narcoleptic malady that inflicts Bradford Cox’s latest Atlas Sound album revolves around a tireless regression to the me. On this evidence Cox may well have one of the most meticulously studied navels in music. Parallax is a little disappointing as his most successful music has been denser, more abstract and elusive in its meaning: early Deerhunter, Logos rather than Let The Blind Lead.... It’s a little chastening when album begins with a disclaimer, ‘I found money, I found fame, but I found it really aches’, preparing you for the personal crisis of a moderately popular recording artist. At least on Let the Blind Lead... it was the introverted crises of a purportedly oddball bedroom-bound savant. Maybe the stream-of-consciousness, improvised lyrical mode that Cox prefers is stunted by the insular labours of musical success. Yet to write off Parallax completely would be an exercise in ignorance. Musically it is rich. The album shows off its creator’s ample ability to produce diluted reverb-laden harmonies as a template for subtle harmonics and to show off the textural improvements in Cox’s singing. Cox has begun to affect a more adult voice that sometimes – for instance on ‘My Angel Is Broken’ – evokes Tom Verlaine (which has actually stoked my curiosity as to whether the lyrics are now prepared and practised). The muddier production of old has almost inevitably been cleared up and a greater range of musicality is shown; there is even a harpsichord on one of the tracks, or, at least, a guitar vaguely emulating a harpsichord.
When Cox transcends his malaise this album presents its best moments. ‘My Angel Is Broken’, previously mentioned due to the Tom Verlaine-style diction and inflection, is Atlas Sound at its best, wry, slyly sentimental but not mournful. There is guitar interplay that wouldn’t be out of place on an askew R.E.M. or Smiths track with its Peter Buck inspired arpeggios. Also ‘Nightworks’ is more expansive than other songs on the album with spectral backing vocals hidden in the mix. It is sullied only by a burst slightly contrived chaos at the end, like a child’s volume-knob remix. ‘Te Amo’ is complex and baroque, a little like if Cox had sung over one of Mark Mothersbaugh’s compositions for The Royal Tenenbaums. It works musically, but he is at it again, ‘when you’re down you’re always down’. His trite cliché-splattered lexicon to deal with depression and love is frankly irritating. ‘Parrallax’ is possibly the high point of the album as it jitters and shudders with layers of guitar and assorted bleeps crackling together like a detuned radio. Closely followed by ‘Mona Lisa’, another grown-up pop song, in which Cox is at his cryptic lyrical peak and the autumnal single coil and fender amp reverb strum that occasionally invades is delicious. If this found its way to the radio it would saturate the airwaves.
Otherwise there are some flecks of MOR crud that grate and can be counted as little more than filler. Take ‘Terra Incognita’, a hard luck tale from Cox that is reminiscent of the music non-music fans would have played at dinner parties in around 1998 while discussing the killing they were making off their newly bought city-edge pad. The corny jazz singing of pseudish lines such as "these ancient technologies strengthen my bones / I know a place called love, yeah" or "the beginning and end / I want to begin" shows a baffling disregard for quality control. "Will you join me?" he asks; as faux-alienation meets cod coyness it is little wonder that, according to Parallax, a number of people have said "maybe not". ‘Terra Incognita’ ends a little like Enya, that is, not well.
Parallax is a good album on balance. However Cox has internalised the narratives of difficult early-to-mid musical career depression - that has inflicted a vast canon of music - comprehensively, and whilst the concrete talent he possesses is there, it is a difficult listen. Lyrically it is something we have heard before and previously with a greater degree of wit and originality, which is a crying shame. Cox is nearing a greater musical maturity that requires content that transcends his unrequited teenage griping.