Deafheaven, Sunbather (2013)

Where bought? Oh there is actually a definitive story to this. In 2017 my band played a festival in the French Alps and after we performed I roamed around the site in a daze and stumbled across a record stall. I'd tried to buy the album at home but couldn't find it anywhere, but as soon as I saw it I had to have it. In an excited rush, I borrowed 20 euro from my pal/deputy guitarist Thom and thrust it into the stall holder's hand and ran off with it. Apparently the stall holder rolled his eyes and got another one out from under the rack and re-stocked the shelf as if to say "why so excited, this shit isn't exactly 'You Left The Water Running'?" but this dude obviously didn't live in Worcester.

Now the dust has settled on the real black metal or fake black metal debate (me: probably fake actually but I don't really care for authenticity) I still see Sunbather as a strange and brilliant achievement. 

You could argue that it was partly their own press hype but I do genuinely feel the way they shifted this genre so invested in abstract questions of power, glory, brutality, death, hate, inner strength etc. into a more socially relevant paradigm. I'm sure questions of 'will I ever even own a house?' have long disappeared into the view, but for a bunch of not-rich people from the Bay Area this must be a genuine question. They don't suggest class war or expropriation, but they distill the sad rage into some good tunes.

It's an hour long and usually hour long rock records have some kind of crap on there. It's just the way it is: rock is meant to deal in small thrills rather than sustained pleasure. But somehow, possibly because of the way the album is structured, it is a rare non-boring non-crap 1hr of music. There's only four songs 'proper' and three interstititial interludes and if you were being generous you could say not all of those interludes are brilliant (also it's a double vinyl, so a lot of flipping). But they do a great job of opening up the space ready for the next 10 min+ black metal/post-rock/shoegaze slab down the pipe. I can't choose between Dream House (the drum fills in the back half give me power to turn a car over), Sunbather (last 6 minutes an incredible thrill ride), and Vertigo (beautiful bit of guitar pedal sound sculpting in the intro) as fav rave but in truth it's a great modern rock album and as such coheres.