Deerhunter with Tiger Choir @ The Metro 8th February 2011

Sideshow season in Sydney provides all manner of opportunities for Aus acts looking for a leg up in the support slot sweepstakes.  Taswegian three piece Tiger Choir got the nod this evening (possibly as much thanks to extra-leaved clovers as the strength of last year’s self-titled debut EP – judging by the grin glued to his face, singer Elliot Taylor, for one, seemed unable to shake his disbelief at the band’s presence) and made the most of it, mixing zippy little pop punk numbers (in the vein of Die! Die! Die!) amongst some less inspired electronic fare.  Promising, but nothing to write home about, on this occasion anyway.

Deerhunter did their thing at The Annandale when last they were in town.  They’ve had a leg up or two of their own since then, Bradford Cox’s stellar songwriting chops (and whimsy) taking the group in a poppier direction, and reaching a wider audience, with last year’s stellar Halcyon Digest.  Which isn’t to say that they don’t do convulsively brain-churning quarter-hour effects-pedal-offs anymore, but rather that they’ve simply learnt how to keep themselves in check, Cox foregoing the gloriously odd-ball rants in which he’s sometimes indulged with the band themselves barely stopping for air before an apparently capacity crowd.

While they’re masters of ironic delivery (right down to the cutesy half-smiled bows by which bass-player Josh Fauver acknowledges audience enthusiasm at the close of each song), the overriding impression Deerhunter give nowadays is of an earned effortlessness, Cox and guitarist Lockett Pundt playing with an unfussed, I Could Keep Doing This All Day sense of containment.  Highlights tonight come in two flavours, the punchy day-glo pop of the former (such as the harmonica-riffed ‘Memory Boy’) and the tightly interlocking, carefully choreographed guitar jams of ‘Desire Lines’ or ‘Nothing Ever Happened’, powered by the latter’s meticulous picking.

Even the most ardent fan’s patience was tested come encore time however, the band, their duty done, using the nostalgic waves of ‘Cover Me (Slowly)’ (track one of 2008’s breakthrough album Microcastle) as the launch-pad for a twenty-five minute descent into Clive Barker-esque psychedelic sound sculpture, culminating in the aforementioned Cox-Pundt pedal-off.  You’ve gotta love a group that can empty a place as surely as they can fill it.

First published in The Brag, Iss 399, February 14th 2011