In Deerhunter, Lockett Pundt is always going to overshadowed by frontman Bradford Cox; no matter how much his guitar-playing and songwriting means to the ever-larger indie titans. As Lotus Plaza, Pundt gets to shine solo; and like Cox's own side-project, Atlas Sound, with Lotus Plaza Pundt, too, has undertaking an evolution from drone pieces to glorious pop-songs."Strangers," the first single from the freshly-released LP LP Spooky Action At a Distance, kicks in with a jangle worthy of Real Estate; only swapping out the sunkissed suburban-summers nostalgia for a harder, darker, more dispiriting tone. "Sometimes there's no going back," Pundt sings, voice lingering low in the mix, "days when it seems/you're on your own/there's no one else."
The lyrics detail disappearing, in some fashion (they're plenty open-ended enough for infinite iteration and interpretation), and the song has its own neat structural trick to evoke that sensation. Once the verse/choruses are out of the way, and Pundt has jangled his way to infinity, the outro grows ever slower, pulling back the pace and completely changing the emotional tenor in doing so. Where the opening feels like high-fiving indie-rock, by the end of "Strangers" it feels like Pundt has lured you to a dark place. A place lingering in Lockett's inescapable musical shadows.
Lotus Plaza, "Strangers"
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