FROM A NEW CULT IDOL TO A PHILOSOPHER OF POP, TO AN ALBUM ABOUT ALIENS, TO HIP HOP’S GOLDEN ANTIHERO—THIS YEAR’S SOUNDTRACK WAS WINSOME, WEIRD, OTHERWORLDLY, AND WHATEVER

PHOTOGRAPHY RYAN McGINLEY
TEXT PATRIK SANDBERG

One of Atlanta’s most prolific songwriters, Bradford Cox returns this month with his third LP under the moniker of Atlas Sound. Known for his incisive lyrics and aerial melodies as much as for his tendency to give songs away for free online, Cox has developed a sound that is at once spatial and confined, achieving an intimate feeling of exploration that is so sensory it’s difficult to try to describe.

On Parallax, the Deerhunter front man flexes the ever-expanding muscle of his craft over twelve atmospheric, pulsating melodies. “I first heard the term used by Mark E. Smith on the Fall’s Hex Enduction Hour as a teenager,” Cox says of the title. “I came back to it for this record after seeing a Dutch film called For a Forgotten Soldier, about a love affair between an American soldier and a young boy in Amsterdam during World War II. It left me feeling disturbed.”

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KEYWORDS: Atlas Sound, Best of Music 2011, Bradford Cox, Patrik Sandberg, ryan mcginley, VMAN 24 The Decades Issue