Deerhunter - Microcastle

With their third full-length LP this Atlantan art-punk quintet can still conjure up an image of Christopher Walken in a headband - carelessly waving a revolver at his own temple - but the difference now is that Deerhunter seem a little more concerned about the consequences of pulling the trigger. That's not to call this a restrained effort necessarily, but Bradford Cox's troupe have truly come to harness the melancholic mania of last year's Cryptograms; opener Cover Me (Slowly) is a lush ballad, seamlessly wrought with the perfect ratio of sad/happy while Agoraphobia is like a magic eye picture for anybody without the patience to fall for My Bloody Valentine's squall. And so they carefully steer Microcastle; shedding the reverb and refining their songwriting to a point where they sometimes barely resemble the gang who endured the turbulent sessions of their first and second records to produce a cohesive, striking amalgam of all that they have learned so far. [Dave Kerr]