Define noise. Now that you have done that, think of noise in an instance where it is beautiful.


If you are capable of this, you will enjoy Deerhunter and more specifically, a Deerhunter show.
I saw Deerhunter at the Metro in Chicago, Il. To say the least, they were loud. The audience was inculcated with noise, but in such a good way.
The show was reminiscent of any other relatively small show. There were a lot of people crammed into a dimly lit venue. There was yelling and chatter and a stage, empty of people, but laden in instruments.
There were two bands preceding Deerhunter.  The first, Canada vs. Japan was a single man. He played one song, essentially a multifaceted compilation of synthesizer–with a lot of drum rhythms and bass–liken it to trance music. It was okay, but nothing worthy of acclaim.
The second band was Real Estate. They were okay as well but nothing much more.
The songs had all of the classic faux paus that one would want to avoid in being under an independent label, which is, they’ve found one kind of different sound and stayed with that, but never diverged from the initial sound.
They sounded a lot like everything not worth mentioning.
There was Pavement-like rhythm guitar, which is roughly country western. The bass and lead guitars were even more predictable and it seemed like the band played four different versions of the same song, all with different lyrics.
Every part of their sound resembled a template of what seems cool, and I doubt many people who are serious about the intellectual interpretation of music, would be interested in Real Estate.
None of this mattered though, because I didn’t come to see Real Estate.  Deerhunter was wholly different and furthermore they knew it.
They all kind of stumbled onto the stage, looking disheveled and dreary eyed, with the general melees of the south encapsulated in their posture.
They spoke very little, before starting on what would be one of the loudest shows I’ve ever witnessed in all of my life.
They were continuously surrounded in billows of fog being exhaled from fans beneath the stage. The fog was turned gold and purple, and as the show went on the lights grew dimmer until the music seemed to drift from some abyss.
The sound was everything one would expect from Deerhunter, but wholly different in a way because the noise never stopped. There were never any breaks, only a continuous noise between each song, sometimes dreamy and sometimes frightening.
It seemed as though it was getting out of control, but the stoicism of each member of Deerhunter made one realize that they were in complete control of the sonic blasts being held in their hands and in our ears.
To describe the music is nearly useless, because it is so abstract and existential.
Maybe people should go and see Deerhunter and witness the ultimate, “crescendo in noisiness,” themselves.
But bring earplugs.