Albums to watch

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?

Deerhunter

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?

Album number eight from the Atlanta, Georgia indie rock band from led by Bradford Cox and co-produced by Ben H. Allen, Cate Le Bon and Ben Etter

ADM rating[?]

7.7

Label
4AD
UK Release date
18/01/2019
US Release date
18/01/2019
  1. 10.0 |   The Skinny

    The slow, crumbling decline of civilisation has rarely sounded so good
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  2. 9.0 |   Exclaim

    They continue to look forward and create music that feels unlike anything else out there. This one is no exception: it's the perfect antidote for these bleak, modern times
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  3. 9.0 |   God Is In The TV

    The first five songs on the record are stunning in their emotional impact and musical scope
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  4. 9.0 |   Clash

    Surging into new ground while retaining elements of their classic sound
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  5. 8.5 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    While time will decide whether it’s the best Deerhunter album, WHEAD? can lay claim to being the most ‘Deerhunter’ Deerhunter album. It’s utterly, completely, resolutely and defiantly them
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  6. 8.2 |   Earbuddy

    Atlanta's Finest make an album about our awful world without somehow including trap drums or glitch-pop
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  7. 8.0 |   All Music

    From the weariness and wonder in its title to the mix of delicacy and anger in its songs, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? is one of Deerhunter's most haunting and thought-provoking albums
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  8. 8.0 |   Drowned In Sound

    A singular thing, not quite of this world, desert fruit ripening quietly on the eve of the end
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  9. 8.0 |   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
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  10. 8.0 |   The FT

    The band’s eighth album combines melodious charm with sharper, more confrontational passages
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  11. 8.0 |   The Music

    An extension of the ideas Cox was flirting with on the band’s 2015 album, Fading Frontier, only this time he’s replacing guitars with harpsichords to execute a grand detournement from the rock'n'roll genre
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  12. 8.0 |   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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  13. 8.0 |   The Quietus

    If we are in the end times, let’s listen to beautiful music about the end times
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  14. 8.0 |   No Ripcord

    The temperamental shifts in Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? give it a cold, distancing effect, as they incorporate offbeat sounds that seem influenced by electronic composers like Delia Derbyshire. But there's still that punchy quality that gives them a pop framework
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  15. 8.0 |   Pitchfork

    Though the band is now squarely in its pop era, the nostalgia that laced its early records has morphed into a timely, fatalistic vision of the future and national decay
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  16. 8.0 |   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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  17. 8.0 |   The Independent

    On Deerhunter’s eighth album, frontman 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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  18. 8.0 |   PopMatters

    Deerhunter's eighth studio album wrestles with escapist and confrontational impulses, and continues their exploration of shifting sonic identity
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  19. 8.0 |   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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  20. 8.0 |   The Irish Times

    Album closer Nocturne is a distillation of the record’s conceit, bringing a lightness of touch to its swaggering percussion and synthesisers. It is unpredictable and compelling – classic Deerhunter
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  21. 8.0 |   Uncut

    Some of Deerhunter's prettiest songs to date
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  22. 8.0 |   Q

    It is a lean and often brilliant album. Print edition only

  23. 8.0 |   Mojo

    More exploratory than Fading Frontier, but there's a minimalism that helps its stark ideas and sad-eyes melodies shine through. Print edition only

  24. 8.0 |   NME

    This is how you turn pop into art

  25. 7.5 |   A.V. Club

    You get the feeling you’ve been thrust into a dream, temporarily torn from the present in order to observe it, understand what’s going on, and return to reality with new tools to keep that all-encompassing fear at bay
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  26. 7.5 |   Consequence Of Sound

    Along with Fading Frontier, the album presents a new era for Deerhunter, one more contemplative and spacious yet continually beguiling
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  27. 7.5 |   Pretty Much Amazing

    Certainly their best album since Halcyon Digest
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  28. 7.5 |   Gig Soup

    Deerhunter have clearly reached their pop faze but only time will tell if they can make the breakthrough that has thus far eluded them
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  29. 7.5 |   Spectrum Culture

    Cox himself has said that the band’s golden age is over, yet 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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  30. 7.0 |   Slant Magazine

    This is a Deerhunter album, so closer listening reveals much more going on beneath the surface. To be fair, though, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? isn’t as viscerally challenging as many of the band’s prior efforts
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  31. 6.8 |   Paste Magazine

    Even in these most dire of times, an illuminating embrace can create a sense of ease and assurance
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  32. 6.5 |   The 405

    It would be nice if Deerhunter had a clearer plan of attack on nostalgia culture, but instead Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? boils down to merely a really nice sounding pop rock record. It’s frustrating for an album with such confident production to leave its message behind
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  33. 5.8 |   Sputnik Music (staff)

    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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  34. 5.0 |   Tiny Mix Tapes

    Cox can’t disappear, and the more he tries to distance himself from his sound, the more his sound becomes obtrusive, just there and concretely his, like a terse encore and nothing more
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  35. 4.0 |   Crack

    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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