Album Review: Deerhunter, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared

Eclectic is too small a word to describe Deerhunter's approach. Recorded in Marfa, Texas, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? manages to combine both the brutal starkness of the small town landscape in its lyrics, and the richness of Marfa's surprisingly vibrant cultural scene in its expansive musical direction.

The album, which draws on a potent mix of psychedelic-pop, garage, and indie-rock, isn't quite post-apocalyptic, but the world that it depicts is certainly on its way there. Like Bowie's 'Five Years', the project chronicles the dark, final days of civilisation - a fate implied to be mostly self-inflicted.

Although the premise sounds like a sci-fi movie pitch, the material comes from a very current state-of-mind. The project's existential-dread-inducing title captures the atmosphere of mass fear and anxiety now pervading America, and the wider world along with it. 'What Happens To People' and 'No One's Sleeping', inspired by the death of Labour MP Jo Cox, are the two most obvious examples, with the latter literally stating, 'No one's sleeping, great unrest/ In the country, there's much duress'.

With such dark themes, you might expect the album to be seriously bleak. Yet somehow, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? proves to be a gripping, and at times even joyful journey. Strong pacing and unpredictable instrumentation result in an album that is unabashedly strange, and always daring.

While Deerhunter are definitely not the first musicians to tell us that the world is screwed, it's seldom been said so compellingly.

Out now.

8/10