Rainwater Cassette Exchange (to be released digitally 5/18 and on CD and vinyl 6/8- UPDATE: now on cassette, too!) is the latest offering from Deerhunter. Immediately apparent from title track and promo mp3 “Rainwater Cassette Exchange” is some inspiration drawn from contemporaries Animal Collective (front-man Bradford Cox, incidentally, spoke of this in a Pitchfork interview), sounding a bit trippy and oceanic, as well as like a poppier version of their last album, Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. Next up, “Disappearing Ink”, my favourite from the EP, and “Famous Last Words” have a succinct punchy-ness, a Deerhunter trademark which begs repeated listening. “Game of Diamonds” takes the tropical mood surrounding Rainwater to greater heights and underscoring a movement away from shoegaze…and then there’s “Circulation”, which is awash in all that noisy, shoegazey goodness you’d come to expect, and flickering out with snippets of TV channels changing. As a good EP ought to, Rainwater Cassette Exchange feels like a wonderful album cut short and shows a deepening of the band’s sound that bears great promise for a future full-length release.

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