Fluorescent Grey
| Fluorescent Grey | ||||
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| EP by Deerhunter | ||||
| Released | May 8, 2007 | |||
| Recorded | July 2006 at Radium Studios, Athens, Georgia | |||
| Genre | Indie rock | |||
| Length | 16:15 | |||
| Label | Kranky krank107 | |||
| Producer | Chris Bishop | |||
| Deerhunter chronology | ||||
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| Vinyl cover | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Drowned in Sound | (8/10) |
| Glorious Noise | (recommended) |
| No Ripcord | (6/10) |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.8/10) |
| PopMatters | (9/10) |
| Prefix Magazine | (8.5/10) |
| Tiny Mix Tapes | (3.5/5) |
Fluorescent Grey is an extended play accompaniment to Cryptograms, the second studio release by Atlanta-based band Deerhunter. The EP was released on CD by Kranky on May 8, 2007, and later as a vinyl bundle with Cryptograms. A music video for the track "Strange Lights" is included with the CD release. The album's cover is a photograph of Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt as a seventh-grader. Its lyrical themes touch on death and the decomposition of the human body—"Fluorescent Grey" is the name lead singer Bradford Cox gives to the color of dead flesh. Fluorescent Grey received a number of positive reviews upon its release. Cox later released a free series of demos over the internet, being early versions of tracks on Fluorescent Grey and other material.
Unlike Cryptograms, Fluorescent Grey does not contain any ambient tracks. Lead singer Bradford Cox considers the EP's four tracks to be "four singles; they're all four good. They could stand on their own." The songs were recorded while Cryptograms was being mixed; their sound has been described as "tightly song-focused, not as drifting or dreamy" as Cryptograms. Cox had considered including these tracks on the next Deerhunter record instead of releasing them on their own. However, he wanted the band's next album to be "something totally different" from Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey.
As with Cryptograms, Cox did not write the lyrics to the band's music in advance, instead singing stream-of-consciousness. The lyrics of Fluorescent Grey carry themes of death and the decomposition of the human body. Cox used the term "Fluorescent Grey"—also the title of the EP's opening track—to describe the color of decaying flesh. He has described the lyrics of the song as being "about panic attacks, lust, and existential dread." "Dr. Glass", in which Cox sings of "so many useless bodies…in the world", is characterized as "more existential dread on a global scale". Cox has said that the EP's third track, "Like New," is "about waking up one day after a long period of depression and finding the world somehow more bearable and kind of ‘new’ and exciting again." The fourth and final song on Fluorescent Grey, "Wash Off," describes Cox's encounters with an "uppity hippie kid" who sold him counterfeit acid as a teenager, insisting that Cox was not open-minded enough for the drug to affect him. As the song ends, Cox repeats the phrase "I was sixteen".
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