Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
| Deerhunter
Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared is the eighth studio album by the American indie rock band Deerhunter. It was released on January 18, 2019 on 4AD. The album was co-produced by singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon, Ben H. Allen (who had previously worked with the band on Halcyon Digest and Fading Frontier), Ben Etter (who worked as a studio assistant on Fading Frontier) and the band itself. The first single, "Death in Midsummer", was released on October 30, 2018. The same day, a world tour in support of the album was announced, starting in November 4, 2018.[9][10][11] The second single from the album, "Element", was released on December 6, 2018. The album leaked on December 12, 2018. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Beneath them, though, a piano rings out as if into wide open space, and Cox sings like he’s trying to be heard from the other side of a gymnasium. A sickly, simple guitar solo reinforces the illusion that the song takes place in both an arena and a coffin. The vertigo of the combination makes an ideal vessel for the lyrics.
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Spin
What’s fantastic about Deerhunter is that legendary aspect, where the antiheroes, the most unlikely heroes, become the sigil for our most insecure aspects, the moments that shake us to our core. It’s not self-mythologization when the facets ring so true.
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Consequence of Sound
Arid and expansive, the album shimmers with thoughtful meditations on destruction.
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Stereogum
For all Cox’s casual doomsaying, the existence of Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is one of many small evidences that love persists for now. When it finally burns out, that’s when the end will really be near.
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Drowned in Sound
The band ia a very, very long way away from the ambient punk sound that made their name. It’s a clutch of odd songs, made odder by the circumstances and symbolism that have been layered on them.
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The Guardian
Recorded in rural Texas, this atmospheric album switches from psych-pop to alt-rock to experimental lo-fi, held together by Bradford Cox’s drawl.
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NME
This is how you turn pop into art.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
Anthemic and lustrous, its spry piano-driven melody and marimba bridge trace the very structure of our musical fore-hearing. We’ve heard this song in advance. Perhaps for this reason, Deerhunter can’t disappear.
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Sound Blab
It should come as no surprise that Disappeared is their most complex work since Halcyon Digest and features a theme that others have tried with more directness.
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The Line of Best Fit
It’s a mess of contradictions, a jumble of cohesive ideas – and a reminder, if one were needed, what a great feeling it is to be part of a “small audience”.
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DIY
Deerhunter have often dealt in lofty, intense blows, but on album eight, they provide a breezy distraction from the chaos outside, and it’s most welcome.
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Slant Magazine
It’s in the almost hidden contrasts of these songs that Deerhunter hits on a powerful formula for songcraft.
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Pop Matters
It's a classic album-fan's album, attention spans be damned.
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Wall Street Journal
Deerhunter turns its concerned gaze outward on its new record, which does away with the lo-fi sound of its earlier music. There’s plenty to suggest that the group’s creative energy will sustain it into middle age.
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Sungenre
It’s a mysterious work which feels as though it ought to have some extra hidden meaning to it. It may do, it may not – but half of the fun of this album lies in attempting to figure it out.
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Independent UK
Bradford Cox takes on the role of war poet, documenting the things he observes with a cool matter-of-factness, and heart-wrenching detail.
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Irish Times
It is unpredictable and compelling – classic Deerhunter.
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Loud and Quiet
In thirty-seven minutes, it offers up a plethora of intelligently crafted societal takes and yet presents them invitingly enough that, if you’re so inclined, you can just let the music wash over you.
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Exclaim
It's the perfect antidote for these bleak, modern times.
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The Times
An air of eerie disquiet, which makes sense when you discover it is about the murder of the MP Jo Cox. That sets the tone for an unsettling, stark album that uses everything from bloodless synths (Greenpoint Gothic) to the dulcet tones of Wales’s Cate Le Bon (Tarnung) to offer a 21st-century state-of-the-world address in surrealist pop form.
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No Rip Cord
This is Deerhunter, after all, a warped bunch whose only natural course is to keep it weird. Theirs is a dystopian saga with a rhythmic touch. Which, really, is what ultimately binds them closer together.
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Crack Magazine
Tired indie tropes – wilderness metaphors and twee imagery about village greens and country roads – keep resurfacing, like a New Year’s resolution that has quickly slid away to be replaced by the same stale habits.
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AV Club
Thoughtful, strange, spiritual, immersive, rewarding upon repeated and thoughtful engagement—things may be headed in a better direction.
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Metro Weekly
Always on the edge of being overwhelmed by its own monotony, and in the end, its short runtime may be the one thing preventing it from succumbing to entropy.
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Northern Transmissions
“There are no boundaries left to cross,” Cox sings. That isn’t true of Deerhunter, but they’ve made a huge leap with Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
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WPTS Radio
Deerhunter have cemented their place in the canon of indie rock in the last decade. This album is a great listen and I recommend it to any fan of the genre. I hope that others enjoy just as much as I have.
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The Music AU
He’s replacing guitars with harpsichords to execute a grand detournement from the rock'n'roll genre. It’s a magic trick that happens right in front of your eyes; in his own words, it’s eternal detournement.
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The Young Folks
It’s a strange mixture that really works.
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Uncut UK
What makes Deerhunter one of today’s great American bands is their ability to absorb their environment and channel this into music that always strives to be different to what they’ve done before and which challenges preconceptions of who they are.
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WRBB
Off they go, delivered from this grey crumbling world to the next great frontier, where I’m sure they’ll find ample inspiration for their next album. Until then, there’s plenty to appreciate in this grim, creepy and positively delectable set of songs.
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The Student Playlist
Adds up to yet another strange but fascinating chapter in the history of Deerhunter and Bradford Cox.
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Financial Times
It imagines “a place to fade away”, set to the ceaseless tick-tock of marimba and sighing exhalations from horns that appear to be on the verge of breathing their last.
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Spill Magazine
While this album does bear on the dreary side lyrically, it most definitely has a sublime quality throughout.
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Cryptic Rock
It’s very much a fact: Deerhunter have indeed made a Science Fiction album about the present. For these reasons, Cryptic Rock give Deerhunter’s Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
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Post trash
The good use of chaos is a value not to be neglected to understand the importance of the work. We are lying down and rolling with yet another Deerhunter pearl in our ears.
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NPR
Themes of depression and anxiety have always been strong throughout Deerhunter's catalog.
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Spectrum Culture
This album, like the band’s previous two, only gets better with repeated listening, and if this is the sound of a band in supposed decline, they can still smoke nearly any other outfit working at their peak.
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Earbuddy
They’ve achieved something neither the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan have: releasing five consecutive great albums.
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Niche
A cult band doing their thing for the pleasure of the converted, another building block in a long line of records that will one day make up a modestly stunning temple.
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Hot Press
Manages to combine both the brutal starkness of the small town landscape in its lyrics, and the richness of Marfa's surprisingly vibrant cultural scene in its expansive musical direction.
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Musik Express
A powerful, graceful guitar and ghost album about vanishing.
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HITC
The band seem set on doing what they want to do, whatever the results. Like many other chapters in their career the journey comes before the destination.
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Sputnik Music
The pleasures on Disappeared are highly attenuated: almost every good melodic or structural idea is cushioned in some greater manifestation of banality or aggravation.
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The 405
Boils down to merely a really nice sounding pop rock record.
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Th Wee Review
Bradford Cox and co take us on a haunting journey through our troubled cities.
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Under the Radar
Deerhunter are still a band that are completely beholden to music's ability to spiritually transcend even the worst state of things. If you really pay attention, you will be infected by this attitude, eat some hummus, and maybe start something yourself.
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OOR
But Deerhunter has especially developed further on their eighth roll and Bradford Cox is excellent as a songwriter. Mentally probably too, because he especially encourages to enjoy the most basic things in life.
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WXOU
In conclusion, this album was surprisingly pleasant to listen to. It had some excellent blends of ambience and other flavors of indie rock.
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Beat Route
In itself is a perfect representation of the modern age and, ultimately, a perfect sonic depiction of the tidal wave that was 2018.
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Sic Magazine
Interpret it all how you will, but Cox and co. are no amateurs and much of Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is a classy and nuanced exploration of new directions for the band.
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The Skinny UK
While the destination may be nebulous, Deerhunter know that the enjoyment lies within the journey. The slow, crumbling decline of civilisation has rarely sounded so good.
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Bleached magazine
Though there is still a great deal of It’s a stark and fitting observation of a modern dystopian world. Deerhunter’s typical crypticness on the album, it can best be described as the musical equivalent of a science fiction movie.
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Clash Music
Most importantly, what ties it all together is that it is so unmistakably Deerhunter without sacrificing any of their mythos or crucial genetic makeup. And we sure can't find any fault with that.
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KTSW
Deerhunter refuses to remain stagnant and demands attention and praise with Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, which is exactly what it deserves.
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MXDWN
it is a brutally honest and thematically consistent assessment of human society. It makes for a complex, challenging and thoroughly compelling album that, in spite of some of its weaker tracks, is one of the first essential pieces of listening in 2019.
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Atwood Magazine
This record takes the fairytale approach to depicting modern times, the Seussian method to describing lost people.
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Dansende Beren
An album that is sometimes hard to grasp. But which Deerhunter is that? Just like at their other work, the group does not show the back of its tongue after one listen. Those who exercise patience will hear a record that sounds particularly characteristic.
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Humo
They all fall into a unique fold such as only special groups that can shape. On this record, keys are more important than guitars, and yet the gut is never far away.
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God is in the TV
it takes 15 years of oscillating and condenses everything that makes this band great into about 40 minutes. On those terms, it’s absolutely essential.
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NZ Herald
Give yourself over to its peculiar obsessions and unusual vibes and you'll find a lot of depth and sonic details to discover as you disappear into its songs.
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Times Colonist
Proves again Deerhunter can rise to the challenge of reinventing their sound without losing themselves — without disappearing.
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Mecca Lecca
The songs breathe and end up being more subtle than the immediate pop songs of its predecessor. This appears to be Deerhunter’s slow burner and will likely take more listens than previous efforts to fully appreciate.
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4 Out of 5
These moments arrive mostly through vocal manipulations, instrumental tracks, and sequenced bleeps and bloops; gimmicks, by all means, but there are more lasting flourishes that keep this from being a purely surface record.
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Mystic Sons
Deerhunter never seems to diminish. 'Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?' is still as exciting to listen to as any of their early work, and helps maintain that high level of constancy the band have always been able to conjure.
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Treblezine
Like Cox’s voice on “Nocturne,” it will eventually sputter and fade out. But decay can yield beauty, too—and if there’s a piece of optimism on WHEAD?, that’s it.
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Young Post
We should be grateful that everything hasn’t disappeared yet, otherwise we wouldn’t have heard this great new album.
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Xpress Magazine
it is a must. Not only have Deerhunter crafted a beautiful sonic palette, they have written some great songs here.
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Stomp and Stammer
It’s a fine addition to the Deerhunter canon by Cox, guitarist Lockett Pundt, drummer Moses Archuleta, bassist Josh McKay, and a huge contributor to the latest evolution in band’s sound, keyboardist and saxophonist Javier Morales.
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Amoeba
The melodies sound soft, sensitive, and sincere, and they’re made all the more powerful by this heady brew of ideas.
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Arts ATL
At its heart, Deerhunter’s latest manifestation elegantly explores human purpose and existence in the face of inevitable dissolve — examined through an arid lens chock-full of experimental instruments, dazzling colors and brooding lyrics in contrast to joyful melodies with the bittersweet briefness of life.
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Stack
Deerhunter’s ability to beguile remains firmly intact on this record, with the band’s constant evolution making for some dazzling moments that will linger in your mind.
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The Ransom Note
Questions the disappearance of culture and the role of popular music in a time of algorithms and playlists.
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Juno UK
The masterwork of the band's ambient and cinematic scope remains as strong as ever, and alongside Bradford Cox's undeniable haunt, vocal contributions and extra (subtle) hints of subversive nihilism come from Cate Le Bon and White Fence's Tim Presley.
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Acrn
Like a journey through the futuristic badlands without ever referencing such a fantasy. In all this wretchedness, “your cage is what you make it."
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Totally Dublin
A thoughtful contemplation on ageing and the transition from rebel to reactionary that seems to be a recurring theme in US pop-culture more so than ever, while Futurism luxuriates in a lush, yet knowing psych-rock sprawl at its breaks.
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The Fire Note
Everything that makes them such an exciting band is present and accounted for (cue amp drop!) They’ve just cleaned themselves up a little.
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MCR Live
Sonically there’s a melancholic sincerity which haunts the album. I won’t tell you it’s an immediate masterpiece either, although I would highly recommend you get lost in the album for a while.
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Narc magazine
This is the sort of album that matures at a great pace with inert intricacy in content and deliverance. It’s a predictably great album that might push its way into the album of the year lists.
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Reading Eagle
Deerhunter challenged the texture of their sound and context of their lyrics and produced a complex and pleasing result: a musical journey into their ideas of death and the beyond.
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Vulture Hound
In short, one of indie rock’s most consistent bands have released a reliably good album, thematically rich, fun to listen to and super weird – and what more could you reasonably ask of Deerhunter?
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Byte FM
Cox and his band pose uncomfortable questions and give conciliatory answers. This should someone imitate them first.
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Laut
Bradford Coxs delivers with his eighth longplayer by the way the first "formerly everything was better" album of the 2010er generation.
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ABC News
A self-proclaimed sci-fi album about the present, "Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?" proves again Deerhunter can rise to the challenge of reinventing their sound without losing themselves — without disappearing.
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Schmutz Berlin
Is it time to check our egos at the door and to put on our utopian shoes for a moment? This potentially nice sentiment is all Deerhunter can ask for in this day and age while listening to their remarkably refined and deceptive album. WHEAD? is a fun ride.
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For Folks Sake
Voices transformed, sounds turned over, every time you seem to have a handle on what’s going on Deerhunter shifts the sound, causing a reexamination of the elements that have gone before. It’s a wild ride through a nightmare reality, yet in the hands of Bradford Cox the ride is challenging and exhilarating.
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Indie Style
Deerhunter sounds more organic and accessible than before, and the strong songs certainly compensate for the weaker. As a result, the band succeeds once again in making a completely unique record in an already richly filled discography.
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QRO Magazine
After consistently delivering for years now (not to mention Cox’s side-project, Atlas Sound), Deerhunter are not only still here, they’re still finding new places to go.
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Secret meeting
Deerhunter’s most eclectic record of their career – and is yet further proof that, at this point, American groups will not be losing their grip on the alternative music scene any time soon.
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Casey Wolfgang
STIFF AND SLOPPY. yeah, this band is long past their prime, I’d keep moving on.
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Cavalier Daily
In this impressive album, Cox proves his talent for complex lyricism and knack for creating catchy songs is not lost, while also identifying the fear and uncertainty of global politics.
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York Press UK
It’s an album that neither feels settled – surely intentionally as there’s no lack of musical confidence here – and never allows you to settle, often clouding the imagination of its creators behind a hazy sound.
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Wrong Mog
It is unexpected and strange, and, like the rest of the album, beautifully done.
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The Gryphon
If you’re able to drag your focus away from the hypnotising ambience of the albums sound, the melancholy lyrics Cox delivers are just as mesmerising.
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Busterz
Is Deerhunter's quietest album yet. It is often somber and experimental: the vocals appear as distorted fragments and seem muted in the midst of instrumentation.
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Nashville Scene
Deerhunter’s catalog stands as one of the deepest and most idiosyncratic of any rock band currently working. The MediaFire age may be dead, but its defining band lives on.
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Mindies
Showing us how they have been changing their rock coordinates with the passage of their work, we are facing a work that without being entirely brilliant as a whole gives good account of its emphasis to find a renewal measure.
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Yahoo Finance
Though the album loses some of the momentum from its gripping beginning, the twisted imagery lingers long after the final notes.
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The Ithacan
More of a concept album than a record with standalone songs, but it is brilliantly thought-out. With cosmic ambiance, it bridges the gap between cacophonously chaotic and provocatively philosophical.
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Bedroom Disco
Despite this remarkable spacy retro sound, Deerhunter remain on the indie floor and have presented an album that leans out of time and still sounds highly topical.
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Transistor
In doing so, they have delivered yet another unique and deeply interesting album that will no doubt capture the attention and hearts of their cult following, whose wait for new music is finally over.
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Elsewhere NZ
Those of us who have considered Deerhunter a pretty important band might find this very disappointing and really not worth the time spent decoding it.
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Pear Shaped Exeter
Fails to amount to more than a largely forgettable and dull affair.
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Tinnitist
By the end of the surprisingly tight 36-minute set, we still don’t really understand why everything we know and love hasn’t already vanished. But we might know why Deerhunter have never had a hit single.
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Alt Media
Regardless of your usual musical preferences, this album is worth giving a listen sheerly for its creativity.
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Titel Kultur Magazine
For those who say that indie music is devoid of ideas Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is a much needed slap in the face.
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Pinnacle of Sound
Many of the tracks on the record, attempt to be creative in their premise, but fail to fully deliver something engrossing or cohesive in context with the rest of the album. Forgettable.
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Peanut Butter Pope
Best aspect – Beautiful layering and mixing. Biggest flaw – Sometimes, like on ‘Detournement’, Deerhunter are too strange for their own good.
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Send Track One
A disjointed record, to be sure, but one with enough moments of interest to merit a listen.
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McQueen Muses
One might argue it’s not as straightforwardly beautiful, appreciable or accessible as, say, Halcyon Digest, but it’s a rewarding listen, and a worthy addition to the band’s canon.
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Brighton's Finest
A jangly pop record, that takes you through a sonic adventure of modern indie sounds, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is, crucially, a whole load of fun from a band that seemed to have had that sucked out of them.
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Byte
I found that the album grew on me each time I listened to it, despite not being memorable at first.
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Aquarium Drunkard
A larger world to get lost in. Cox continues to confound, continues to myth make, wryly and self-effacingly accepting his own larger than life status as a storyteller and documenter of our atmosphere and time.
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