Deerhunter

In 2011, I flew to Atlanta, Georgia, to spend the weekend with Bradford Cox, frontman of the city’s great neo-psychedelic rockers Deerhunter, for The Guardian. The plan was to show me around ‘his’ Atlanta., which turned out to include visits to his mum and his dad’s houses, as well as the band’s rehearsal space and Cox’s own house, in which he threatened – with a smile – to imprison me until I agreed to redo the interview – this, after 13 hours in his company…

“I’d rather not be doing this interview,” Bradford Cox says, wincing. “But you had the audacity to invite yourself into my world. And if someone flies to Atlanta to talk to me, I better treat him with respect.”

Given the reputation of Southern hospitality, it’s fascinating that Cox’s definition of “respect” includes threatening to, “rip you a new asshole if you paraphrase my emotional moment of transparency,” when my tape recorder runs out at an inopportune moment. Likewise his threat – said with a smirk, admittedly – not to let me leave his house until we’ve redone the interview to his satisfaction – this, after 13 hours in his company. Luckily, no amount of cat-and-mouse tactics stops him from being compelling company, like scrapping with an over-achieving, extremely lucid teenager.

As Deerhunter’s lead singer, main songwriter and co-guitarist, Cox is the principal reason Janelle Monae isn’t Atlanta’s only shining star. Forming in 2000, the band only settled on their current line-up when Cox’s schoolmate Lockett Pundt joined on guitar in 2005. 2008’s brilliant Microcastle album raised expectations, made good by last year’s Halcyon Digest, which expands the band’s uniquely eerie, heavy-lidded and cryptic vision. “A Southern gothic take on glam Berlin. Exile On Main Street meets Low meets Tusk,” Cox reckons, though that leaves out the doo-wop influences that set Deerhunter even further apart from the uplifting crescendos of America’s top-tier alt.scene, from Arcade Fire to Grizzly Bear. On top, Cox’s beguiling and troubled lyrics (recent single Helicopter is based on the story of a Russian rent boy reputedly thrown to his death after losing his youthful allure) also demand exploration.

Unfortunately, Cox is done with exploring himself. In his teens (he’s now 30), he freely admits to interviewing himself in the mirror, fantasising about attention. Not anymore. It’s partly not his fault; he inherited the genetic disorder Marfan’s Syndrome – sufferers are abnormally skinny, often with weakened lungs and spine. “People think I’m a junkie because of how I look,” he frowns. But as a (former) inveterate blogger at regular loggerheads with fellow bigmouths, such engagements have left him weary and wary. “I think I confuse more than anything when I talk,” he wagers. But after no UK interview in two years, Cox accepts my suggestion to try something different; to show me around his Atlanta.

He picks me up in his Volvo, and we head to an industrial warehouse on Atlanta’s outskirts to meet the agent of Afro-American folk artist Lonnie Holly, who at the age of 60, has made an album’s worth of ruminative folk-blues and is seeking collaborators. “Let’s just get a fucking tape recorder in a room instead of creating a weird studio scenario,” Bradford announces, immediately taking charge. “I don’t want any compromise on his part.”

Improvisation is the key to unlocking Cox’s hyperactive mind. Driving back, he points out Lenny’s, “a dive bar where Cole [Alexander, of The Black Lips] would do weird improv stuff, really chaotic and energetic.” He’s still at it today, creating music almost to the exclusion of socialising. “I don’t like going out,” he says. “Except to one of three restaurants. I’m very rigid like that.” He made an exception for a New Year’s Eve party, to his chagrin. “These young fucking art school kids attacked me because I took off Duran Duran and put on [experimental minimalist) Tony Conrad. I don’t understand what kids want anymore and I’m not interested in catering to it. All they want to do is dance and fuck, and those are two things I’m completely incapable of.”

Cox has identified before as gay but now claims he’s asexual, “because I’m a virgin.” While his teenage pals were having fun, “on stained couches, I was in hospital, addicted to painkillers after spine surgery, addicted to that blissed-out feeling that I think has a lot to do with my taste for ambient music.”

Drinking sweet black tea – “the table wine of the south” - in Sauced, one of his three food stops, Cox recalls he was just ten when his cousin introduced him to The Velvet Underground, moving on through ‘60s garage, ‘70s Krautrock and ‘80s post-punk. “But we’ve always tried to blur things further. Like the sound and the fury of a show more than the actual notes.” He pauses. “We’ve always been dismissed by avant-garde people as too pop, and by pop people as being fucking freaks.” He reckons their name holds them back. “Deerhunter. [puts on exaggerated Southern accent] From Atlanta, Georgia! If I heard that, I’d imagine an ironic, tripped, cynical resonance. But we needed a name for a flyer and our first drummer chose it.”

Over a very late brunch the next day, adopting his usual posture of perching, legs drawn under him like a gigantic bird, relaxed conversation is clearly off the menu. Daylight makes him nervous, even “useless,” and he fills time by eating, running errands and perhaps visiting his (divorced) parents. But at night, there’s no stopping him. He recently gave away four albums – totalling 49 songs, and plenty of them listenable – online under the title Bedroom Databank. “You come off on tour and there’s this crippling depression, like, what do I do with myself? I improvise. Fuck record labels and commercial criticism, let people hear what it sounds like when I’m making music without knowing there’s an audience, like I used to.”

We drive to neighbouring Marietta, to visit the band’s rehearsal space, Notown, a suburban carriage house full of band stuff. Cox sits behind the drumkit and starts – ably – playing the Krautrock motorik pulse before slumping on the sofa. “I get irritated when I see all this equipment and think we should be doing more. But everybody else has girlfriends and they’re lazy. But I’d probably want to settle down too with some nice girl, or guy, or whatever I fancied at the time. People with kids, I’m often struck by jealousy. Because my parents love me unconditionally. They were supportive even when we fought so I’m not terrified of failure like many people I know.”

He suddenly springs up. “I’ll take you through the process. I set up a shitty mike and fuck around with a guitar until something melodic happens. I usually come up with a vocal feeling, trying to sound open and vulnerable and androgynous. That’s inspired by John Lennon, how he always sounded like a little boy. Then I just rap stupid shit. And then I move on to the next one.” He plays me his last effort, a slice of happysad pop called Right Of Way that, given its origins, is breathtakingly good. “Thanks. What you’re hearing is the sound of someone really depressed because they can’t write. It’s a shit B-side at best.”

Rather than curtail the interview, he suddenly decides I should meet the parents. “You gotta interview them!” he barks. “I get my strength from my dad and my punk from my mum.” Cox’s love of ‘50s rhythms also comes from Jim Cox, a Fats Domino, Little Richard and Coasters fan. “Dad was a badass,” Bradford grins. As for his son, “he was creative from the time he was cantilevering building blocks,” says Jim. “You couldn’t mould him.”

“I was an emboldened, precocious kid,” Cox admits as we drive to mum Edith’s house. “In middle school, my best friend and I would hold hands just to attract this wild energy. I always had a thing about teenage mental institutions. I read that Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music was very therapeutic for shock therapy. I relate to those who find solace in dissonance and chaos.”

Edith, who also has Marfans, recalls how Bradford’s childhood “was ruined,” by illness and bullying. But art and music saved the day. “When he was 12, Kurt Cobain was his idol, and Brad suddenly started playing guitar, with no training. Before that, he’d write and draw stuff that was just not usual for someone his age. I have boxes of it upstairs.”

A box labelled Keep Forever, Ages 8-11 is retrieved. “Even in my youth, I was a cynical dick,” Bradford says, searching through the cuttings. “Flame and aerosol can / have you lost your path in red eye watering embers?” was penned at the precious age of eight.

“Aren’t you glad I kept these?” mum beams.

The daylight gone, Bradford has brightened up and suggests we eat tacos, “and then I’ll take you to my house.” In a messy, under-lit and paraphernalia-strewn bedroom – “my sanctuary” – fit for a student more than an adult, he says, “ask me the questions again, and you’ll get better answers. Starting now.” That demand contested and sidestepped, I ask why he is misanthropic. “Why are you a journalist? That’s the summary of this article. Do you really think I am?” You act like it, I say. “I don’t disagree with that. But misanthropic people don’t cry at films like I do. You just see me in the context of being interviewed. For crying out loud, you have me under a microscope.”

As if suddenly recalling his dad had raised him, “to have a strong stomach, and not be self-pitying,” Cox softens again. “Nothing replaces seeing someone appreciate my music, their eyes closed, singing along, and telling me after the show how much it means to them. You can’t be some cynical whiny-arsed artist, shouting ‘I want my space!’ There’s nothing but gratitude.”

We call it a night and he drives me home. “Thanks, it’s been fun hanging out,” are his parting, courteous words, and he’s gone.