Atlas Sound

Atlas Sound/Cargo/15.11.09

It used to be well known that the success of a show involving Bradford Cox depended entirely on the musician’s fragile mood. However from the word go  tonight seems to almost pinpoint the moment he fully transitions from tortured artist to wholesome entertainer. The show opens with ‘Quick Canal’ his beautifully ambient duet with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and the pair swap laughing glances as they are joined on stage with an eight year old ‘interpretive dancer with a future’ . Once his comrades leave the stage Bradford is left to his own devices, in this case a guitar, a drum kit and a few pedals and begins what is a wonderfully stripped down intimate affair. A fact the singer himself acknowledges saying if the sold out audience was halved it would be almost like a show with friends in his living room. It seems from this point the planning is left up to the audience as he just talks to the audience, warning us of impending diarrhea due to lack of sleep, and ends up taking requests. These include one for Pavement which he attempts in homage to ATP who are putting on tonight’s gig. There are points during the show that he apologises for the lack of a live band but that would have made the line between tonight and seeing his better known project Deerhunter, which almost the entire audience profess to having done, too blurry. These basic performances allow the folkier side of Bradford’s music to shine through and that is what separates this project from his other work.

Atlas Sound w/ Laetitia Sadier-Quick Canal