by Max Kaplan (@kapslock3)
It’s no surprise that the fourth installment of Mexican Summer’s Myths Series happens to be the shared bill of Bradford Cox and Cate Le Bon. We’ve already seen plenty of these two in 2019. Le Bon, having co-produced Deerhunter’s glossy Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared, put out Reward back in May, which was a career-highlight in her own growing solo catalogue.
With Myths 004, the finished product isn’t an album in the standard sense, but it isn’t meant to be. What it plays like is an open canvas, where two artists are free to brandish their tools as they wish, playing off the other’s adventurous spirit. The world of these recordings begins somewhere near where Deerhunter’s video for “Death in Midsummer” leaves off: with a few wanderers in a dusty shack in the Texas desert. The project sets off with “Canto!,” a track that thumps along with all the swagger of a Deerhunter jam and the frenetic sorcery of a Le Bon composition. Cox’s verses trade in both the alienating and the lecherous, from “I’ve grown so ugly I’ve worn out my tread” to “Come ride with me baby I’m long in the tooth.” The choruses swell with Le Bon’s influence, and her love for a graceful outro can be felt as the refrain melts into a creaky player piano.
While Le Bon’s formulae lies all over the opening track, her unmistakable voice announces itself properly on the record’s second track, “Secretary.” The clicking of pianos and vibraphones lay the background for her to enchant us with the same stark elegance that blanketed Reward, “Can I take some time? Can you stay on hold? Take a holiday, make amendments.” Before you can write it off as a Reward outtake, Cox enters the space with an existential spoken verse, “Why are my eyes so bare to the light?” It’s a voice, earnest and dreamy that sounds more like Bradford Cox than anything heard in any Deerhunter or Atlas Sound to date.
To some extent, these first two tracks constitute their own sort of “Split 7-inch” of their own, with the lyrical and sonic content bridging the gap between both artists’ most recent albums, respectively. Where we go from here is uncharted territory, with the spooky slop-jazz transition of “Companions in Misfortune” marking the jumping off point. Le Bon and Cox open up the floor to channel ragged soundscapes that stray from their meticulous studio output.
“Constance” is a meandering vehicle of an instrumental track, channeling the sonic equivalent of an I-SPY photo. Vibraphones bubble around a funked-up drum kick, and every time the piano interlude carries the track back to center, a new collage of sounds spiral into the 80’s romp. “Fireman” brings on the absurd and comedic, as a wildly distorted Cox tells the story of a finding up puppy after a house fire on Xmas eve over flittering sax squawks and Le Bon’s hypnotic drawl.
Where the 30-second “Jericho” stumbles along like the Faust-iest of interludes, “What is She Wearing?” fully captures the unhinged 70’s art rock that Le Bon and Cox so clearly adore. The never more off-the-cuff Le Bon hilariously channels her inner Lydia Lunch, spewing a litany of things she finds “not so nice,” (including paying 5 pence for a plastic bag she doesn’t even want), before the song builds into a surprisingly danceable punk jig.
Myths 004 comes together as an effortless scrapbook, with Le Bon and Cox shedding the polished edges of the rock songs that they’ve perfected too many times over, for the sake indulging in primal art rock that they were bred on.