Monomania

1. 01Neon Junkyard2:52
2. 02Leather Jacket II3:09
3. 03The Missing3:41
4. 04Pensacola4:00
5. 05Dream Captain3:02
6. 06Blue Agent3:30

Before Monomania's release, Deerhunter described the album's music as "nocturnal garage" -- an accurate, if somewhat elliptical, nutshell explanation of what Bradford Cox and crew (who include new bassist Josh McKay and additional guitarist Frankie Moyles) are up to on this set of songs. After Halcyon Digest's nostalgic haze and the fragile beauty of Atlas Sound's Parallax, it seemed that Cox was drifting further away from the rawness of his early days. He breaks away from this insular turn on Monomania -- to a point. The album's first two songs, the unabashedly messy "Neon Junkyard" and riff-fest "Leather Jacket II," are the musical equivalent of blowing off steam after the more considered, delicate territory of Cox's recent past. It's not until "The Missing"'s chiming guitars and harmonies that Monomania offers something resembling Deerhunter's more recent output, and that song was written by longtime guitarist Lockett Pundt. Cox sometimes goes overboard with his fondness for abrasiveness, as on "Nitebike"'s over the top vocal posturing or the way the odd coughing/barking backing vocals shatter "THM"'s pretty reverie. More often, though, Monomania's willfully raw sounds adopt the…