With the way that deer are populating the independent music scene these days, you’d have to believe it’s only a matter of time before those yellow, diamond-shaped signs begin to pop up around Williamsburg. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, however, I’m sure they’re already there, and that is the home base for the blooming sextet that call themselves Deerpeople. Led by Brennan Barnes, the band is but a year old, forming in early 2009 and keeping active by hovering in and around their home town, playing gigs that included the Norman Music Festival, which takes place but an hour south of Stillwater. Their first proper release, a self titled EP recorded with the help of Trent Bell (who most recently worked with fellow Oklahomans Flaming Lips on their re-imagining of Dark Side of the Moon) is a five song collective that mixes together familiar elements of folk and pop to present a well-produced cocktail of sounds that never really seems to find the right blend.
What hinders this EP the most is its identity crisis – the instrumentation, while clean and often punctuated by pretty sweeping strings that say “take this seriously,” is otherwise put on the backburner as Barnes’ inane lyrics just turn it into a silly charade. The band plays with a grandiose sense of scale, but the end result from this Oklahoma outfit proves little and feels frustratingly inauthentic. Each song follows the same overall structure, beginning small before finishing big (for the most part) – riding a plain, uninteresting crescendo to the end and using the standard fare of folky instruments to do so.
The opener, “Dr. Gay Washington,” which starts modestly with an acoustic guitar and Barnes’ tailor-made folk vocals, evolves by way of southern-flavored riffs and a fleeing violin melody before spinning off into a guitar solo as a fuzzy, bouncing bass takes it across the finish line. Sounds compelling, right? But even with all of these moving parts, these songs still manage to fall flat. “New Dance” takes itself literally and has a second half that is built around a pulsating bass line that would make Brandon Flowers curious. It’s in this second song off of their EP where Deerpeople showcase their pop prowess, but even the band’s meandering into such a style comes off as safe and restricted.“Canada” opens up with an atmospheric buzz being circled by a dancing guitar and a thumping bass drum while Barnes quite eloquently asks his father “are you simply retarded or are you dead?” Yikes. At least I think it’s his father he’s speaking to, but the narrative here, and on most of this EP, is too broken and mismatched from the actual music to be able to find anything to latch onto. The highlight of this record comes from “Seattttle,” whose well-timed dips in and out of psychedelic passages mingle well with Brennan’s most cohesive effort out of the whole lot. Even the muddled midsection is rescued by an ascending accordion melody that, finally, brings a song here to a sensible and satisfying conclusion.
Despite Trent Bell’s crisp production, Deerpeople’s first release comes off as a feel-around-in-the-dark kind of effort – they are clearly a young band looking to characterize their music, and in making this EP, have tried a bit too hard at pushing and pulling their own sound into many directions, ultimately causing it to sound directionless.
