Deerhunter : Halcyon Digest :: Review
Deerhunter’s latest, “Halcyon Digest” has been out for a while and I avoided writing a proper review for what seems like an eternity. “Halcyon Digest” is one of those albums that startled me because it offered a slight change in direction that I don’t particularly care for. I thought that if I didn’t listen to the album for a couple of weeks and returned to it later that I might be able to listen to it with a refreshed palette. This refreshed palette would allow me to leave my previous listening experience at the door and start fresh on an album that I gave up for dead. Now that several weeks have passed, I decided to give “Halcyon Digest” another futile listening attempt which unfortunately resulted in the same miserable conclusions. So much for this “Halcyon Digest” finding itself in heavy rotation on any of my iDevices.
There was something sluggish and loose about “Halcyon Digest” that really bothered me and that doesn’t happen often. If an album is terrible, I’ll at least give it a chance in the hope that I find something to laugh at during the proceedings. That circumstance didn’t happen here, as nothing is laughable in terms of performance, it’s just not my thing. As it turns out, I found that listening to “Halcyon Digest” was a chore that I dreaded. I found that I couldn’t make it past the fourth track, “Sailing” without immediately switching to something else. Maybe I have an onset of adult ADHD and I can’t sit still long enough to discover the joys that many have claimed are buried deeply on this album. If that’s the case, then ignore my non-review of this album and chock it up as extra press on an album that’s already made it to the best of lists of many people.
