Dan Deacon – “Crash Jam” (stream)

It’s a testament to Deacon’s restraint (you heard me) that he can write intimate and complex music that still gets branded minimalist. Deacon relies on simple chord changes to motor his mechanics, but the notes themselves contain all the grime and rust, the spark plugs and fried currents that he can cram into them. The gritty texture of the synth bass on tracks like “Guilford Avenue Bridge” and “Crash Jam” in particular are nasty and snarled, industrial filth that simultaneously mimes the devastated vista and the mechanisms that brought it down. — Timothy Gabriele, review of Dan Deacon’s America