Critical Voices: Atlas Sound, Parallax

Bradford Cox can sing. This may come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Deerhunter front man, whose musical modus operandi has proven for years to consist of complex, experimental instrumentation coupled with muffled, ambient vocals. But on Parallax, the latest album from his solo project Atlas Sound, Cox allows his mostly unaltered voice to take the center of attention on multiple tracks, making for an album that is a little bit more normal without feeling uncharacteristic.
Cox strikes a delicate balance between pop elements and more experimental components. On the tracks where Cox’s voice doesn’t sound like it’s being recorded through a cheap walkie-talkie, complicated layers of sometimes unidentifiable sounds ensure that the listening experience remains unique. On “Terra Incognita,” which starts out as a clean, guitar-accompanied plea for divine aid, instruments slowly begin to build up from different points in space. Toward the middle, it morphs into a fuzzy, lo-fi aural collage whose components are never at odds with each other, even when it peels away at the end to a loud sound that seems to be generated by a running dryer.
Although songs where Cox uses his actual voice are certainly enjoyable, the album also shines when more classic instrumentation mixes with distorted vocals. Album opener “The Shakes” is driven by a clear, toe-tapping beat, but the vocals are muffled and moaning in classic Atlas Sound fashion. The incongruity between the two is stark and unexpected but succeeds in creating a song that is both catchy and experimental. The same goes for many tracks on Parallax, like “Praying Man,” where a distinct harmonica sound nearly jars the listener, and the surf-pop influenced “Mona Lisa.”
But this isn’t to say that Cox has lost his flair for the experimental. The album’s second-to-last track, “Quark Part 1,” is an almost eight-minute-long study in sound manipulation, a solid three minutes of which consists of the same convulsing, static buzz with some clanging sounds in the foreground. It’s a cool idea in theory, but the song runs for far too long. When it finally leads into the far more appealing “Quark Part 2,” the listener has already lost interest. By ending on a note so out of line with the rest of the album, Parallax does itself a disservice.