Atlas Sound – Logos

As Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox is not a punk from Georgia anymore. And although Logos is two years and two albums removed from the memories of Deerhunter, his last noisy band, it nevertheless contents itself in remembering the murky, often eerie sound of the past. If Deerhunter was the sound of Cox as a thrashing punk grotesque with Marfan syndrome in the Gothic South, Atlas Sound is his inward journey to a more surreal plane.

Atlas Sound – Walkabout (ft. Noah Lennox)

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Logos is largely comprised of understated experiments in contemporary pop and folk, as if the album was the unadulterated product of a musical dreamer who locks himself in a room with a few guitars, toms, a tape machine, and a laptop with internet access. (In fact, Atlas Sound is the brand name of the karaoke tape machine Cox recorded with way back in junior high, which explains some of the album’s nostalgic tones.) Judging by Logos‘ distant sound, Cox lets his exploration of conscious memory melt the walls of that room, so he can then float far away, as in songs like “Attic Lights,” where Cox confesses from an imagined paradise, “I remember the punk.”

As we float on we are enchanted with visits from heralded legends on this astral plane of pop. Logos prominently features the likes of Noah Lennox, a.k.a Panda Bear in the currently circulating mp3 single, “Walkabout,” a collaboration that could have happened in a toy-box, (but probably over the internet) which constantly begs innocent nostalgic questions such as, “What did you want to see / what did you want to be / when you grew up?” Later, the album features Laetitia Sadier of  Stereolab on an eight-minute tribute to Stereolab’s signature mid-century-modern aesthetic, complete with rich, oscillating electric organ and popping bass groove.

The remainder of Logos is a tapestry of jabbing low-bit sweeps that give way to meandering melodies over lilting washed-out drums. And though these fuzzy pop memories can drone like an ambient slide-show, closer listens reveal in these vignettes a haunted unrest that Cox evokes with his dynamic voice – sometimes like a child’s call from a distance, and others like a monster’s breath on the back of your neck.

Like many other outfits who have introduced a unique craft to contemporary pop songs, Atlas Sound remains in a realm of songwriting that stays comfortably above the medieval pop music industry. Logos positions Atlas Sound as one of the primary explorers of this boundless sphere, as long as he doesn’t come down.

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