The Deer - The Beautiful Undead (LP)

Clear vinyl including full-color printed inner sleeve with lyrics and download code.

When live music took global pause, The Deer had momentum to sort. The five musicians took the energy historically reserved for tour and brought it into the studio, a pressure cooker not only for creativity, but newly, for existential contemplation. The result is two full albums, the first of which is The Beautiful Undead. It’s an uninhibited collection reflecting upon what it means to lose your sense of purpose. The Deer, amidst turbulent assessment, transformed a paralyzing void into an empowering surrender of ego—a rollicking submission to the immense unpredictability of existing. 

Throughout the album, The Deer maintain the modern folk flutter and Mazzy Star melodiousness they’re known for, but infuse those delicate bones with emotional tension, and indulge a new sonic edge. Enlivened by multi-dimensional instrumentation—synths, fiddle, mandolin, electric and acoustic guitars, slide guitar, piano, upright bass, and even mellotron populate the record—The Deer’s full arrangements shift their sound to an impressive pocket between Fleetwood Mac and Big Thief. The Beautiful Undead is luminous, boisterous, and invigorating; a free-spirited album fueled by hard-earned revelation. 

On lead single “I Wouldn’t Recognize Me,” lyricist and front-woman Grace Rowland writes to a younger self. She shares, "If I could go back and give my younger self some advice, she may not even realize it’s her. But I would tell her to care for herself like she does for the world, to take a stand for what she believes in, and to be ready for it all to change.” The song’s vibrant melody and commanding lyrics (All in all is falling upon us) accept the endlessness of change and evoke an energized readiness for it. Says Rowland, “The self is a collective of different versions of the same person, and it will always be up to that little girl - and every person she decides to be at every time in her life - to set her future self up for success, and to be kind to and forgive her past self."

This attention to personal growth pervades throughout the album. As its five members find themselves digging more deeply into commitments, songwriters Grace Rowland and Jesse Dalton shape odes to the profundity of refined love, as with “Bellwether.” The song shimmers with a gentle melodiousness reminiscent of Mazzy Star, mirroring the reeling feeling of falling in love. The lyrics are wise and haunting as the band submits to the cyclical nature of affection: While protecting my sanctity / My sanity / A canyon that’s eroding away / Down the alleys of my beliefs / A torrent sweeps / And carves its route around what I hide / I gave it time.

The band’s expanding perspective reaches beyond the interpersonal. On “Columns,” zagging guitars precede vivid and startling images of climate change: There is a road / No one could cross after the ocean rose / Here lies a path / So overgrown I heard the forest laugh. On “Golden Broken Record,” the band fall altogether mournful, an achy fiddle intertwining with sizzling lines: Right or wrong / Will you know what side you're on / When it's gone. Rowland’s vocals wobble grief-stricken as she cautions: Maybe it don't feel like danger / When it is what it is / But it is. Says Rowland, “Our world is changing. Can we hold ourselves accountable for our part in it, and reverse our fate? Like in a fight with a loved one, can we stop, listen, and learn?

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, the planet is getting warmer, and human extinction looms likely. The Deer handle their devastated call for change with an artful subtlety, an infectious sense of play, and a projection of internal learning onto the external world. Their genius is in creating palpable, emotional urgency not with boisterousness, but fact. Throughout The Beautiful Undead, The Deer radiate an intensity fit for the times, but not at the cost of dancing.