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Lotus Plaza, "Spooky Action at a Distance"
For his second solo effort, Deerhunter's Lockett Pundt abandons his experimental tendencies and throws himself wholeheartedly into making chiming, sun-dappled guitar pop.  On one hand, this album is much more focused, hook-filled, and filler-free than The Floodlight Collective.  On the other hand, he absolutely should not have done that, as he was much more compelling before.
While this album is very different from its predecessor, it is easy to see where Lotus Plaza's change in direction originated: the best moments on Floodlight (like "Red Oak Way") tended to be the poppiest, most propulsive ones, so Spooky Action at a Distance attempts to replicate that success with every single song.  Unfortunately, there is a substantial problem with that logic, as Pundt is not a strong enough songwriter or emotive enough vocalist to quite make that work.  The Floodlight Collective's poppier moments worked only because his hazy, mumbled songs were propped up by some extremely cool textures, effects, and inventive ideas.  Spooky Action doesn't offer much in those regards at all, so the songs have to stand entirely on Lockett's melodies and beats.  Sometimes everything comes together pretty well, like the stomping, tambourine-heavy beat and strummed harmonics on "Out of Touch," but he more often misses the mark on at least one piece of the puzzle.  Lockett is simply not playing to his strengths here–he has definitely proven that he can do some very likable and unusual things when he is appropriately armed with effects pedals and processing techniques.  Choosing to play simple, fairly straightforward rock seems to be a pretty ill-advised move.
Sadly, there is also another fundamental issue here: even the album's good moments are homogenized into bland lifelessness by the production–the dynamics and character seem to have been squeezed out.  There is little bite, meat, or gravitas to this album at all, just endless vaguely pleasant, polite, detached-feeling sameness.  The low-end is probably the most lamentable casualty, but the problem is most acutely apparent when Pundt unleashes a rare flurry of dissonance–what should be attention-grabbing crescendos wind up being too smoothed-over and devoid of real presence to make much impact at all (though the howling riff in "White Galactic One" is a notable exception).  It's all very frustrating:  Pundt clearly worked very hard on his songwriting and came up with some appealing hooks and loads of nice ringing arpeggios, yet his efforts rarely amount to anything particularly substantial or distinctive.  I suppose this album arguably succeeds as some sort of summery, shoegaze-damaged indie rock road music, but it is too gutted and predictable to hold up to attentive, sustained listening.  While there are still admittedly a few pretty good songs here (like "Strangers" and "Black Buzz"), none of them come particularly close to reaching the highs of Lotus Plaza's debut.  This is a definite step backwards.
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