Atlas Sound

"Te Amo"

[4AD; 2011]

By Brendan Frank; September 21, 2011

Purchase at: Insound (Vinyl) | Amazon (MP3 & CD) | iTunes | MOG

Bradford Cox is releasing consistently good music at a pace quicker than nearly any other artist that you’d care to name, and all of it is devoted to the same shoegaze-y, ambient aesthetic with varying degrees of accessibility. His solo career as Atlas Sound has taken a path that, hindsight being 20/20, seems not only logical but inevitable. Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel worked as a purely musical exercise, while the aqueous Logos seemed like a detour from his work with Deerhunter.

“Te Amo,” the second cut from the forthcoming Parallax, sees Cox’s voice uncloaked, delivering his lyrics with a newfound lucidity. The barroom piano and tropicalia-infused percussion are simply rendered, creating a gleaming, understated backdrop for the star of the show to flex his muscles. The quality of Cox’s songwriting has never been in question, but it’s more full-blooded than it’s ever been.