Fading Frontier

Personnel: Lockett Pundt, Bradford Cox (vocals, guitar); Moses Archuleta (drums).Audio Mixers: Ben H. Allen III; Deerhunter.Recording information: Bloody Hair, Berlin; Future Crayon.Photographer: Bradford Cox.At one point on Fading Frontier, Bradford Cox sings "Take your handicaps/Channel them and feed them back/Until they become your strengths." It's a phrase that could be Deerhunter's motto; they've always excelled at celebrating misfit people and feelings, and never more so than on this album. Recorded in the wake of the accident that hospitalized Cox in December 2014, in some ways it feels like the band hit the reset button on Fading Frontier, which is as different from Monomania as that album was from what came before it. Aside from the slinky, disco-tinged outburst "Snakeskin," which could be the last remnant of Monomania's toughness, Fading Frontier hews closer to the sound the band forged on Microcastle and Halcyon Digest. Though they collaborated with Stereolab's Tim Gane and