Halcyon Digest

it was okay but nothing special

FINALLY they invented INDIE ROCK but for PSYCHADELICUCKS!!!!

Just a very meh, but interesting sound

I loved this. First album in awhile I’ve enjoyed all the way through that I wasn’t familiar with already. It’s not something I’ll be sending to people or blown away by for the next month but I really enjoyed every part of this.

I'd watch them at a festival but if someone said let's go elsewhere then I wouldn't worry about missing them

Plenty of unattractive dissonance here, and the pleasant melodies drone on. I appreciate the deep philosophical message.

A uni classic

Very good record. I remember liking it in 2010 also. 3,7

Favorite Track: Desire Lines

Vähä pitkäveteistä pimputtelua, väsähtänyttä veisuuta. Tuntuu että tämmösiä bändejä on 13kpl tusinassa.

Miellyttävä indielevy. Aika hiimailevaa ja maalailevaa, istui omaan korvaan aivan hyvin. Voi olla, että tarvii tutustua artistin tuotantoon enempi ja kuunnella kyseistä levyä toistekin.

This record is proof that all you need to make good indie music is an unshakable love of 60s pop and Stereolab.

4/5 https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/deerhunter/halcyon-digest/ Surprising to see this in the list, although I do understand it. Not every song is as great as the others, but damn the highs are high. Desire Lines is a 00s indie mainstay, and He Would Have Laughed, Helicopter and Memory Boy are fantastic, too. Coronado has Strokes vibes, so is also fun. The slower songs take some getting used to, but are still good enough to not take all energy out of the album. Not my personal favorite of Deerhunter, but still very good.

Ok

good album

This is very good indie pop music. Calm, rough, interesting.

I had never heard of them, but really enjoyed this album! Added a few songs to my playlists, will listen again.

This is good! Haven't given these guys an earnest listen in a while

It's decent indie rock but I don't get how this stuff gets critically acclaimed like this album did.

Not sure how this made the list. I thought it was ok at first but the longer I listened the less I liked it.

Kind of blah...sort of pyschadelic rock meets Seattle grunge. It wasn't bad but didn't do anything exciting or interesting enough for me to really get pulled in.

They have a unique sound and this is pleasant enough, but I had a hard time getting into it. Kind of a snooze fest.

I really like the dream pop sound. This album is solid! Standouts: Revival, Don't Cry A Strong 4.5 / 5

Иной раз я не понимаю по какому принципу сюда отбираются альбомы. Типа, почему мы должны были послушать этот альбом с потешным фембойным карликом на обложке? Большая часть материала (при том, что это не дебютник группы) звучит как незаконченные демки-филлеры. Вторая часть звучит как какое-нибудь MGMT или же тот же Fleet Foxes прослушенный ранее, ну крч, вспомните любой инди-роцк из рубежа нулевых и десятых. Ах да, ещё я ожидал услышать shoegaze указанный в жанрах, а получил скорее какой-то неумелый lo-fi. При том, что я люблю lo-fi, люблю намеренную грязь, плохое качество записи (как вынужденное или намеренное художественное решение) но тут какая-то хуйня Если тот же Fleet Foxes хотя бы попытался сделать чото красиво в паре мест, то тут некоторые треки словно "ну мы чото поджемовали на студии, на, крч, в продакшен, пусть слухают", что, бля, за, неувожение. В каком-то смысле это хуже чем просто плохой альбом, пушто у меня были на него ожидания чего-то потенциально прикольного.

This isn't going to change anybody's world, but Halcyon Digest was pretty enjoyable indie rock.

Not sure what this is supposed to do for me but it didn’t.

I want to love it because it’s indie/alternative/shoegaze, which we don’t see a ton of on 1001. But it’s so, so boring. 6/10

I might be having a disturbing black & white cover photo theme two days running (yesterday's album being Fred Neil's Fred Neil). But if I am, then I say go ahead and bring me more. And, I feel I should confess, I've always been rooting for Deerhoof over Deerhunter. And with all that preamble out of the way maybe now we can talk about Halcyon Digest. I'll take this dreamy doo-wop catchiness just about any time. There's a hazy quality to the songs so far that seem to inhabit a reverb-soaked American Jesus and Mary Chain-influenced approach to revisiting the 1960s. But there's also just enough twee indie lineage along the lines of Neutral Milk Hotel or Belle and Sebastian that's going to give the ear more to grab on to than just a wall of guitar grit. The restraint is palpable. This album is more spare and yet somehow a little deliberate messiness creeps in at the edges. And while Deerhunter traverse some of the same territory as contemporaries Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, and Vampire Weekend, they arrive at very different places. The impressionistic fragment and the partially erased memory are rendered with sonic textures fitting of their targets. Simple tunes breaking themselves down over a void. Staring into it, what stares back is subterranean and strange. An album like this invites reflection even as we know the image coming back is always-already distorted.

Never heard of this before, I like it, cool indie rock sounds, except for the sax lol

already listened to it. great album, no bad tracks

How am I supposed to care about this if the band sounds like they don't? Too bland to care about this.

I did not like this record.

This is supposed to be the best Deerhunter record but I don't find much to like about it? Like it just meanders around. I'll take Microcastles over this any day.

idk didnt hate it

6,5/10

A band that sort of passed me by at the time, even though very much adjacent to what I was into. I think there was a general feeling in "the scene" that the singer is a bit of a knob. Without feeling there were any particularly outstanding songs, this is a very enjoyable, soft focus listen.

Deerhunter it appears to me is one of those bands where you have to spend a bit of time to see if you can connect with the record. Beautiful in places with some interesting sonic choices, I can see the appeal of certain tracks such as Desire Lines and He would Have Laughed. These are the longer tracks on this album and I think capture the essence of the band as sonic exploration of divergent galaxies. These Beatles influenced Don’t Cry and the Beatles/XTC (Dukes of Stratosphere incarnation) inspired Revival are examples of the incorporation of a particular sonic palate. I acknowledge that certain tracks are particularly appealing because the pop influences are compelling- Revival is certainly one of those tracks. The most compelling aspect of the record in my mind is how each of these dispatches careens off into different galaxies with quiet ethereal moments breaking up otherwise stops on the journey. A good example of this is Sailing which quietly leads into Memory Boy and then quickly followed by Desire Lines. As I am one of those people who detest the Beatles but have loved most of the music by bands who are clearly inspired by them, Deerhunter captures that aesthetic. By the time you get to Desire Lines you should be comfortable with the journey and enjoy the last half of the record such that you’ll go back and ask yourself- why does Earthquake start the record. Bradford Cox vocals capture the indie rock vibe very similar to Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie. These bands could be cousins. Enjoyable and interesting as a well thought out record, the songs do transport you and with the touchstones to past influences make for an excellent album. 4/5

I liked this album to start with, but by about half way through it was really dragging. Maybe a second listen will impress me more. It didn't.

I have not heard of this group or their music. This album has a lot of experimental music. The vocals are buried and not that good. At least it consists of real instruments by real musicians. None of the songs stand out. Also, none of the songs are catchy or have any hooks in them. This is not a very good album. Below average. Two stars.

Surprisingly enjoyable. Liked “He would have laughed”

This is what I do this list for. Solid dream pop and shoegaze. I quite enjoyed it and hope to listen to them again.

Honestly, this is some pretty solid dream pop. I never listened to this band before but I will now. This is a nice find.

Experimental sound, and yet cool

ehh i liked it

Ok, but nothing really grabbed me.

Fine listen for the day, nothing spectacular here. The 2010s were full of Pitchfork-fueled hope in the future of indie. Everything was breaking new ground while paying homage to all the classics. Now it just seems like a small part of the spectrum.

Very nice and dreamy, just a little dull.

After listening to and skipping it in several occasions, finally this album “clicked.” Motivated by the buzz, I attempted multiple times but the “this song is going to nowhere” vibe made me abort mission. The mood was right today and gave space to each song, i saw the context and the beauty was lying there. Not too obvious but rewarding. A slowburn i guess. The morale? Listen to it several times and maybe you get something out of it too.

Like Arcade Fire on 0.75 speed. Nothing bad about it, very typical of mid 2000s electro indie rock. Reminds me of university so that's nice for me.

Some days the album generator gods smile upon you and give you exactly what you need. I had never listened to Deerhunter before today, and I'm glad it happened. Not quite 5 stars, but I plan on giving it another listen so that might change.

Kkas pa vidu cigarettes after sex un artic monkeys

insane album cover

Skilur eiginlega ekkert eftir sig.

If I need to check whether this album came from Deer Tick, Deerhoof or Deerhunter, should it lose points? All decent bands with differences from each other, but in the blur of streaming a sharp manager should have suggested a name change for at least one of these groups. I saw Deerhunter live when this record came out. I do not remember the performance as a gentle, tender one like Halcyon Digest. Deerhunter writes affecting songs that offer enough interesting musical additions that it held my interest. Nothing reaches out and grabs me. Luckily, the lyrics and singing do not fall into self-pitying. If that mood arises the psychedelic folk touches pulled me away from internal gazing. Maybe the lyrics are about foraging in the woods, but the vibe speaks of self-examination. When I saw them the band tossed in The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog” as an encore. I cannot expect this type of sudden genre shift on record. That would be too out of place. However, a few doses of energy sprinkled into the mix would help them stand out from their fellow Bambi lovers.

Every day i remember that i dislike Shoegaze

This was perfectly alright. Easy to listen to and will probably fully forget this

It was ok-ish. Not something I’ll likely listen to again but didn’t hate it

This album is one that is going to need more listening to fully appreciate, I believe. On the first go, I found it intriguing and, by the end, enraging. 3 Boolean: True

Yawn. Since I listened to this album I no longer have a need for trazodone.

Nice dreamy atmosphere. The rougher guitar bits keep it interesting.

I enjoyed this album. I'd only heard maybe one of the songs before. It was a nice morning vibe.

Not for me.

The music was okay but this album cover sucks

Halcyon Digest is psychedelia as a world made miniature. It gets to altered states without rummaging through the usual psychedelic dressing-up box. There are no giant reverberant spaces, no grand phasing swoops, no Mellotron clouds rolling in to announce that reality has become unreliable. Instead, Deerhunter make ordinary musical materials behave strangely. Songs arrive through gauze. Echo folds back towards the microphones. Repetition stretches attention. Odd little chords offer just enough purchase for melodies that seem in danger of drifting away altogether. The effect is dissociative rather than spectacular. The album does not try to blow your mind open; it quietly loosens the screws holding perception together. That smallness is everywhere. At one point the whole band seems to have become a miniature T. Rex, Bolan, Finn and company somehow shrunk and locked in a wardrobe, still grooving away with the same little glam purr and strut. Elsewhere there is Barrettian fragility without the whimsy: songs that feel exposed and slightly crooked, as though they might stumble over their own construction, but where that precariousness is clearly part of the design. “Sailing” may be the purest example. It initially resembles aimless rehearsal-room strumming, but the harmony keeps making unexpectedly clever choices beneath the melody. The chords allow it to float while simultaneously making it stumble. The song seems to be hanging over an enormous empty space, accepting whatever small foothold appears next. Its solitude is not just something described in the lyric; it is built into the way the music refuses to give the melody anywhere completely secure to land. That relationship between uncertainty and form runs throughout the record. Halcyon Digest is full of music that drifts without becoming shapeless. The hooks remain stubbornly intact. However much the surfaces blur, something melodic keeps catching. There is an Alex Chilton quality to that, particularly Third/Sister Lovers: pop instinct surviving inside music that can feel bruised, unstable or half-dissolved. The songs themselves are often tiny things carrying subjects far larger than their scale should comfortably permit. Memory fails. People disappear. Scenes that once offered belonging become hazy little traps. Solitude turns from freedom into exposure. Some songs seem to float past like plastic bags on the breeze, lonely ghosts with almost no physical weight left in the world. Yet Deerhunter resist the temptation to enlarge the music to match the subject. There are no grand gestures demanding that you acknowledge the seriousness of what is being discussed. Death, ageing and loneliness remain contained inside these modest, hand-sized songs. The restraint makes them stranger and, often, more affecting. “Desire Lines” is where the miniature aesthetic becomes hypnotic. A lovely descending guitar figure keeps repeating until it ceases to feel like accompaniment and starts to become a place. The title is perfect: those informal paths worn into grass when the routes designed for us do not match where we actually want to go. The song itself gradually wears a path into the listener. Its long coda has something of the obsessive formal idea behind “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, except imagined through Johnny Marr rather than impending doom: shimmer instead of weight. By the final stretch, the album begins to open out. The songs acquire more physical presence and a little more muscle, but never abandon the miniature world completely. The expansion feels less like waking up than entering a larger dream. Then “He Would Have Laughed” brings the record to its logical conclusion. It opens into loop logic: repetition, accumulation, motion that may not actually be progress. The lyric’s concern with acquisition, solitude and the ways people fill their time fits the structure perfectly. Things accrue while the song circles. And then the loops fall away. What remains is guitar, drums and an extraordinary shimmer, as though the past is being remembered badly but beautifully. The music no longer feels organised into clear recollection. It feels like memory itself: partial, uncertain, luminous at the edges. The whole thing finally dissolves rather than ends, like powder disappearing into water. That is what Halcyon Digest does best. It makes music that seems insubstantial while leaving an unusually strong residue. The songs drift; the songwriting sticks. It is an album to drift with.

Kind of middle of the road for me. Did not actively dislike, but not sure if I would put it on again.

Sounds very promising to me on first listen. I am definitivly going to revisit it.

Halcyon Digest is the kind of album that makes me think of the bit from Family Guy where Peter, believing he’s about to die, admits he doesn’t care for The Godfather because “it insists upon itself.” If we accept that as a valid criticism, then 2010’s indie music is the opposite. It doesn’t insist upon itself. It seems almost afraid you might notice it. This flavor of indie is so gossamer and ethereal and floaty that I have to make a real effort to even be aware of the fact that it’s playing in the background. And the only place it can ever play is in the background. You can be staring at a beige wall and this would still be in the background. Now, I can’t stand the other end of this spectrum where the band tries to make every track on the album an anthem. All your songs can’t be overblown played-at-the-emotional-crisis-moment-of-the-movie epics you hacks. We all love a “Stairway to Heaven”, but that trick only works once an album, or maybe once a career. When you try to pull it with every song then the audience can see the wires and the hidden mirrors and it ruins the magic act. There’s a difference between subtlety and timidity, though, and a band that is too afraid to make music that stands out in any way starts to seem like it doesn’t have the courage of its convictions. And if even the band doesn’t think it’s worthy of notice then why should I? Your album doesn’t have to insist upon itself, but you should at least make an effort to indicate that you made something worth noticing, you pretentious hipster pussies.

Indie rock I guess? It's hard to describe this album but it is pretty decent, has an alright atmosphere

Gear: Focalman Cleardara Artwork: 🙏👗🤏 Production: 🎧😘🤌 Music: 🛋️📼✨ Rating: 🦌🦌🦌🦌/5

Another ambient, psychedelic, shoegaze album. I'm not a fan of the "Let's all get high and stare at a blank wall listening to a mediocre album" sub-genre of indie rock. There's also an unnecessary distortion on every song, and all it does is make me mad. I've tried listening to this band before, and this album makes me remember why I gave up. I will say "Memory Boy" was decent, and gave me some "Yellow Submarine"-era Beatles vibes. But over all, not for me.

Blind album and artist. Yeah, definitely indie dream pop... almost fell asleep.

Pésimo...

Psychedelic and calming

I liked this a lot more than a thought. Unlike a lot of albums I didn’t find it frontloaded but actually got more interesting the further it got. I’ll have to listen to it more to really grasp a lot of it; it is easy to fall into the background while I’m at work for instance. That being said I like the sound a lot.

Average music, as far as I’m concerned – nothing very special. Two stars...

Didnt expected dreampop

Not good

Normally I like stuff like this, but it feels like they weren't trying.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I hit play, having never previously heard of this band. A couple of high points, 'Desire Lines' being the stand out track, but overall quite dull, really. Typical of 2010's US indie fodder- forgettable. Heard before ❌️ Listened this time ❌️ Revisit ❌️ ★★★☆☆(6/10) Total reviewed : 428 Already owned : 95 Purchased : 21 To buy : 5 Nope : 307

Good enough for a single listen. ★★★

This could be a 5 on repeat listens, for now I’m just baffled I’ve never heard this before. Superb album and right up my street

Sounds nice, but also sad. I probably wouldn't go there every time if my pub played only music like this.

Deerhunter Never heard this band. Parts of the vocals remind me of John Lennon . Has kind of 60’s rock vibe with indie rock textures. Cool sax solo on Coronado. He would have laughed and helicopter are two of my favorites. It was good. 3-4? 4

Totally a vibe and moment in time. This is the sound of 2010. Wasnt in love with it then and still find it kind of uninteresting although a little bit nostalgic

This didn't really get me there. 3

Halcyon Digest is okay, but it almost made me fall asleep.

I don’t think these guys hunt deer at all. This is a slow, indie/shoegaze album. This music just ain’t for me, it’s devoid of energy and meaning, the songs just meander and moan for 4 to 5 minutes, then it’s on to the next one. I did not like this, but I’m sure there’s a few folks here who love this stuff. I won’t be listening again. 2/5

What the fuck was that? Good thing we left Animals by Pink Floyd off the list so we could make room for this steaming mess.

This album probably would have hit a lot harder for me back when I was in college. It's just "not try hard" enough to be appealing to a burgeoning adult. Now that I'm more established in life, it doesn't ring as meaningful to me. It's sparse and mystical, but not necessarily in a way that's indicative of exceptional musicality. Although there are other albums/artist in this genre that I would prefer to hear, I do think it's worthy of inclusion in this list as it does give insight into another subculture of music.

I'd never heard of the band before tonight. This album is hard to evaluate. I hear the Beatles, T. Rex, lots of lo-fi aesthetic, plus lots of their own somber thing of course. My ears are adjusting. It's good, yes. Do I like it? I don't know. It inhabits the area of the musical world that I find interesting but probably won't visit much.

I've had too much music like this lately and frankly, I'm bored. Everything is wishy-washy. I'm drowning in the sonic equivalent of millennial gray. Please send help.

Good one, tho I think I prefer Cryptograms.

Fine indie rock but literally nothing special and def not something i needed to hear before i died.

Really interesting record. I was actually more familiar with Atlas Sound then this originator but a really bizarre indie, psychedelic record. Sort of animal collective but not with a more straightforward songwriting style/digestible shoegaze guitars? I think this could one daay be a 5 star but 4 star off a first time listen. Random but listen to their song "microcastle" and tell me there's no original rock from this era.

Listened while walking around NYC this morning. It was ok. 3/5

Ok not interested

The texture of this album, along with its cover, made me think of David Lynch's Twin Peaks and, for some reason, hard to explain, reminded me of Ilan Rubin and his The New Regime. It's no surprise this album received universal critical acclaim. If you are looking for some poetry and woe, check it out.

I always mix up Deerhunter and Deerhoof.

It was fine I suppose.

After hearing Deerhunter's Microcastle, I felt it was only fair to dive into their other acclaimed project Halcyon Digest to see if it would favor more strongly for myself, and much to my surprise it really did! This album felt like a slow melt and while it wasn't a super crazy Psychedelic project, it still very much slowed down my mind and gave me a bit of peace during the 46 minute runtime. It isn't nearly as in your face as Microcastle, but this album has a lot of detail and style to it I quite enjoyed. There is always something going on, even in the more quiet moments, and I feel Deerhunter is really able to express themselves in a much more interesting way with the variety of sounds they toy with here. Halcyon Digest is dreamy and sleepy as it feels like it is winding to a close even from the beginning of the album. Not bad, I can see why everyone ate this up back in 2010 but I don't see what all of the hype is about now in the grand year of 2026.