Deerhunter have changed dramatically and rapidly over their career, from the psychotic depths of Cryptograms to the terrified eroticism of Microcastle and now to the heart stopping wistfulness of Halcyon Digest. Halcyon Digest is principally a spiritual album--in a way, all of Deerhunter’s albums are--but Halcyon Digest is their first album where the preciousness of life finally overcomes the fear of death, the revulsion of decay, and the ache of loneliness. This happens at the final moment of the album’s final track.
“He Would Have Laughed,” is Deerhunter’s most beautiful sustained song, a tribute to the late Jay Reatard. It is built around a simple, looped riff with various instruments and effects layered over it, all orbiting around Bradford Cox’s noticeably weary voice.
Cox opens the song with this line: “Only bored as I get older.” He then hesitantly approaches the next line, seemingly unsure of what words he wants to sing: “Find new ways to cul…t--cult of time.” It’s as if he decides to switch verses midway through the line, thinks better of it, and then thinks better of thinking better of it. The phrase Cox produces, then, is an ambiguous one, to say the least: “cult of time.” What could this mean? It invites the listener into dialogue with the music: “Can you help me figure this out?” Cox sings later, and he may as well be singing to his listeners.
Cox only gets more enigmatic from there. The final verses are indecipherable if approached literally, though the words are sung with a delicate attention to intonation and contour. They must be heard to receive the full, intended impact. And just as the music seems to be approaching its final notes, and the listener prepares for a slow regression into terminal silence, the song abruptly cuts to silence, and the album ends.
The most obvious interpretation of this would come from the biographical background of the song. Jay Reatard’s tragic death at 29 is replicated by the song’s refusal to tidily conclude--in effect, it is a refusal to offer the listener a cathartic release. But I suspect Deerhunter are also getting at something deeper here. By mimicking the terrible suddenness of death, they are able to escape the song’s death.
We know that every piece of art must have borders or limitations. A compact disc can only hold so much music before it runs out of room. By creating a formal ending, the artist is able to achieve a sense of completeness, of wholeness. But this song, and this album by extension, refuses to end and remains incomplete, and the silence that falls inevitably silences us, too. Now our discourse with the music is over, and reflection begins. Implicit in our reflection is the greatest affirmation possible: the affirmation of life.
