BY ANNA ZALOKOSTAS

In print | Published February 28, 2008

Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel," the debut full-length album by Atlas Sound (solo project of Deerhunter front man Bradford Cox), begins — on a note that is hauntingly beautiful and eerily poignant, with a story of resurrection that sets the tone for an album that largely surfaces out of Cox’s struggle and life with Marfan syndrome — a condition that, at 16, forced him to spend a summer in a children’s hospital, undergoing multiple surgeries on his chest and back.

Otherworldly and surreal, “Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel” floats in and out of a misty haze of consciousness; it drifts through childhood and adolescence to adulthood, mimicking one long dream, maybe one that’s even nightmarish at times, the kind in which you’re floating above yourself, looking down at your actions from a distance. It’s often hard to tell when one song has ended and another has begun: the distinctions between them break down as each track blends meticulously into the next. This album is one of hushed sonics and introspection, of secret whispers and ambient meanderings; Cox, whose gangly physique has long attracted much attention, finally gives us a stark look inward. His lyrics are simple and elegant, tender and ghastly beautiful, and though they were improvised as the songs were being recorded on their first take, their power lies in their stark nakedness and honesty.

Out of the clamoring static of the album’s first track, “Ghost Story,” emerges the swirling dissonance and spacey charm of “Recent Bedroom,” where Cox’s ethereal voice repeats “I walked outside / I could not cry / I don’t know why” over the melodious cacophony of tangled distortions, misty ambience, and fluttering noise. “Recent Bedroom,” in its nebulous reverie of sleep and wistfulness, marks one of the highlights of the album, and is soon followed by “Quarantined,” a song whose jittery tinkering, fragmented vocals and quivering vibrations work together to evoke the nervous fear of the haunted hospitals and transformations of Cox’s childhood. In “Quarantined,” Cox carefully articulates every syllable of the line “I am waiting to be changing,” in an almost desperate effort to communicate emotion, as if constant repetition and desperate begging will more quickly bring about the change that he has been so patiently awaiting. “Scraping Past,” with its raucous chiming and fast pace momentarily jolts the dreamer out of a peaceful sleep, but with “Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel,” the last track of the album, Cox ends on an ambient note, just as he began, bringing the album full circle and returning to the precarious world of dreams.

Pretty, ethereal, and dreamlike, “Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel” can, on first listen, sometimes feel like one long blur of ambient noise. The seamless blend of songs, the perfect whole that they create, the lush sounds and hazy fog that they cast over the album can make the whole thing feel like one long track rather than a collection of 14 individual, differentiated songs, a dream that that never really ends but instead undergoes slight modulations, shifts of time, place and emotion rather than a group of individual episodes – until you realize that that’s part of the point. I do think that this is an album that needs more than one listen to fully appreciate — then again, I think most expertly crafted, beautifully whole albums are — so don’t write it off if you’re not instantly impressed. The more I listen to Atlas Sound’s debut CD, the more each song stands apart from the rest, and the more distinct each track appears from the next one, each brining something indefinably unique to the nebulous whole — “Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel” is a series of thoughts, images and sensations that float before you, surreal and transient, creating a whole you can barely get a grasp on, whose outline is faint and hazy and just as indistinct as the breaks between songs.

Anna is a sophomore. You can reach her at azaloko1@swarthmore.edu.

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