Deerhunter

Santa Cruz’s Comets on Fire. D.C.’s Dead Meadow. Japan’s Ghost. Add Atlanta’s Deerhunter to the list. With the summer of ’07 fast approaching, a new slew of bands is channeling the ghosts of the Summer of Love, 40 years after the original hippie counterculture movement. Like their parents in the ’60s, today’s kids still want music to represent freedom, mental expansion and an outsider mentality. This time around, Deerhunter and others of their ilk deliver sound quality, musicianship and crisp songwriting, along with the psychedelic music experience (sidestepping the pitfalls of 25-minute guitar solos and drug-addled, nonsensical lyrics). Vocalist/guitarist Bradford Cox, drummer Moses Archuleta, bassist Josh Fauver and guitarists Colin Mee and Lockett Pundt have found their identity as an ambient neo-psych band. With a new lineup and a new album, Cryptograms, on Kranky, Deerhunter reloads with a barrel full of hallucinogenic buckshot for your headspace. Trickling water opens the new album on “Intro,” an ambient journey that primes the listener for 48 minutes of softly humming keyboards, jangly pop tunes and quiet voyages into the psychotropic stratosphere.