Shock Value

Deer Fellow: “Shock Value”

Demanding attention. Acting erratically. Stirring the pot just to start some shit. We’ve seen plenty of all that int the lead up to this election, but truth be told, for some people, that’s just part of their hardwired human nature.

At least that’s the inspiration for the latest single from Deer Fellow. This Austin duo’s coming up on nearly a full decade together, a duration throughout which we’ve broadly categorized their style as indie folk. However, just like you can never keep their namesake Cervidae in just one spot, Deer Fellow’s done a great job of branching out past their folk breeding grounds with ten point bucks of genre crossbreeding, primarily with pop, best exemplified by last April’s Unravel EP.

Based on that, and even this January’s “Closing Time”, we sort of feel caught in the headlights off Deer Fellow’s latest single that dropped last Friday. Yes, it’s still got those charming orchestral elements carefully nestled in rather than haphazardly slapped on the arrangement. But this time the sonic backdrop is a meadow of mellow psychedelia that we’ve never heard Deer Fellow graze before. Yeah, for a song called “Shock Value”, this one goes down super smoothly, with tons of reverb, far out vocal processing, woody snare rim clicks, soulful chord changes, harmonies galore, and of course, that gorgeous violin we look forward to in each Deer Fellow track.