Deerhunter / Feu Therese / Les Enfants Sauvages

Riding high on the backs of two blistering releases in the last three months, it’s safe to say that Atlanta quintet Deerhunter are having a remarkable year. Their second album Cryptograms and the follow-up Fluorescent Grey EP have blown away fans in search of a droning, fuzzed-out update to the best of the Sonic Youth catalogue. Underscored by their unhinged energy, blissful noise, and (when they get around to it) memorable songs, those recordings had all the core ingredients of a great live show. And on this tour, Deerhunter are fast proving a force to be reckoned with not only on disc, but also on stage. For this Tuesday night triple bill, local Dadaist supergroup Les Enfants Sauvages (featuring members of AIDS Wolf, Les Georges Leningrad, CPC Gangbangs and Pan Opticon Eyelids) got things going with as strange a set as one could expect from the sum parts of their musical backgrounds. Feu Therese (featuring members of Et Sans and Fly Pan Am) were up next with a tightly knit Kraut-drenched set of Cure-influenced pop melancholia. By midnight, Deerhunter hit the stage for an orgiastic 50-minute set that ran the gamut of more melodically-inclined selections, incorporating the prescient noise that figures heavily on their Kranky records directly on top of the spellbinding appeal of songs like "Cryptograms,” "Spring Hall Converts” and "Strange Lights.” It was all very loud, loose, swarming and inspired in the best possible way, at times reminiscent of Swervedriver circa Raise or My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything. A lot has been made of front-man Bradford Cox’s thinness, an alienable feature of the band’s persona he encourages with translucent white dresses and overblown black wigs. Sure, Cox is full of mildly disturbing and arch stage tactics — mid-set rants about wanting to smear the audience with his ashes and pubescent sperm are, if nothing else, meant to provoke — but such antics also harkens back to time when indie rock wasn’t so clean-cut. It helps that Deerhunter have the chops to back it up. Now if only they would play longer sets.