Deerhunter

Bradford Cox as Atlas Sound at Verizon Amphitheater, July 8, 2011

Last night, Atlanta's Deerhunter unveiled the title track of their forthcoming album, Monomania, on the Jimmy Fallon tee-vee show.  I hadn't realized that Deerhunter had a new album coming out, so there's that.

Things appear different this time around, though.  Bradford Cox, wearing what appeared to be an outrageous fright wig, didn't play any guitar but handled vocals only, handing guitar duties over to new band member Frankie Broyles, formerly of Atlanta's Balkans.  Don't know at this point if this change is just for the song Monomania, or just for this one live performance (perhaps to allow Cox his dramatic, burned-out exit from the stage starting at the 2:54 mark?), or if it's a different direction for Cox and for Deerhunter.

Name-dropping:  don't know if I ever got the chance to mention it, but I saw Bradford Cox in the audience at The Goat Farm, watching Atlanta's Carnivores open for Thee Oh Sees.  

Here's the studio version of Monomania:

Update:  Groupthink.  I composed the post above after coming across two separate notices on Facebook, one about the Fallon performance and the other about the new single streaming.  Then I saw that CMJ posted an article about the same thing, including the same two videos, throwing in a tweet from The Roots and a publicity photo from Late Night.  Their review said,  

It’s hard to make much of a splash on a late-night talk show—even the best performances tend to be pretty by the book—but last night Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox brought a touch of the theatrical to Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Sporting a ratty black wig, a flashy spotted shirt and some bloody gauze on a few of his fingers, Cox led his band in a spirited rendition of the title track to Monomania, the group’s highly anticipated new record. As the dreamy garage-rock song built to its tape-loop-filled climax—nice “cut to the tape recorder” moment at 2:50—Cox makes his grand exit. It’s a pretty great moment.

Brooklyn Vegan ran the same story, too, including both videos.  They put it this way:

As mentioned, Deerhunter will release their new album, Monomania, on May 7. The title track has just been released for streaming and it's definitely on the grittier side than anything we've heard from them lately. Not sure if the song is in mono or not, but the "mania" part comes across loud and clear. . . Bradford Cox, looking very much like a late '70s New York punk, and the rest of the band stopped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night (4/2) to perform "Monomania" which took the track in some new directions -- like into the studio's hallway. 

Pitchfork was able to provide a little more of the backstory:

Deerhunter introduced the world to Monomania last night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. While getting dressed for the performance backstage, frontman Bradford Cox referred to himself in character as "Connie Lungpin," donning a wig and bandaging his fingers as a tribute to his father who recently lost two fingertips in a tablesaw accident.  Cox also orchestrated the clip's final moment in advance: He walks out of the studio while the band continues playing behind him, grabbing a styrofoam cup out of a crew member's hand, and waits for the elevator.

StereoGum posted the same media, and wrote:

Credit Bradford Cox with knowing how to seize a moment. Last month, Cox’s band Deerhunter announced the impending release of their new album Monomania, recorded on eight-tracks in Brooklyn earlier this year. Last night, they posted a stream of the album’s title track, a supremely catchy piece of dessicated but jangly garage rock that devolves into a feedback tape-loop freakout before sputtering to a close. And soon afterward, the band played the song on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, turning in the sort of performance that’s going to linger around in our collective brain for a while. The band dressed in a slightly degraded take on what an early-’60s rock band might wear on TV, and Cox performed in a new persona, which he’s apparently calling “Connie Lungpin,” in a shaggy wig and bloody bandaged stump-fingers and Dracula mouth, wandering off through the studio catacombs while his band was still playing the song. It was a stunt, sure, but very few late-night performances have that sense of instability, that we can’t quite be sure what’s about to happen. Very few have me this excited about what the band’s going to do next. 

Arctic Monkeys enthusiasts We All Want Someone To Shout For wrote:

Deerhunter’s new album Monomania drops May 7 via 4AD. They have dropped the title track which just happens to also be the first single. It’s a raw, less produced version of Deerhunter that is slightly more punk, more reflective of the bands earlier days. It’s something fierce. What’s even more fierce is their performance of the song yesterday on Fallon. Be sure to watch the video all the way through, it’s worth it to see how Bradford ends it.

RCRD LBL.com only posted the studio clip, but provided a link to the Fallon performance:

Monomania seems like the moment where Deerhunter, clearly one of the best bands of the era at this point, enters their '90s Sonic Youth phase where things become crunchier, scuzzier and every move is a grand comment on rock spectacle. They unveiled this one on the Jimmy Fallon program last night, and it was one of the more subversive and exciting late night performances in recent memory – all 4:30 am gore and rotting rock 'n' roll. Highest recommendation.

No videos were included, but Atlanta's Creative Loafing might have scooped everyone when they posted their story at 7:58 am, stating, with tongue firmly in cheek and under the eye-catching headline, "Deerhunter hire new lead singer":

In case you missed it, (WHY DID YOU MISS IT? NO THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH EXCUSE) a bloodied and bandaged Connie Lungpin & The Deerhunters debuted a brash and bratty brand new tune called Monomania (click for wiki, ya bum) last night on "Lil' Jimmy's Late Nite Dog 'n' Pony Show."

So there you have it - possibly the most widely reviewed rock performance on network television since The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.