Widely known as the other guy from Deerhunter, guitarist/songwriter/singer Lockett Pundt began recording as solo entity Lotus Plaza a few years ago. The first Lotus LP, 2009’s The Floodlight Collective, was nice and everything, but it consisted mostly of ambient guitar experiments that were more than a little boring and did nothing to extricate him from the ever-expanding shadow of his more dominant bandmate, noted genius/crazy person Bradford Cox. Sure, fuzzed-out guitar pedalsmanship is pretty much Pundt’s trademark, but many people expected more from the writer of many of Deerhunter’s most anthemic songs, few and far between as they may have been.
But follow-up Spooky Action at a Distance, released a couple months back on Kranky, is a murk masterpiece that manages to create perfect pop bliss out of syrup-thick recluse-fuzz and Krautrock-like repetitiveness. Many of its tracks, including “Strangers,” succeed in providing indelible hooks while simultaneously absorbing the listener into deep, all-encompassing atmospherics. Like Joy Division or Echo and the Bunnymen, the atmosphere is generated not only by thick synth or guitar drones, but by a mesmerizing, steady beat that accentuates the melody with its very unchanging-ness, and leaves the effect of always being on the nervous precipice of an explosive climax that never quite comes. Small, soft-spoken and preternaturally gifted, Pundt is on course to be the Harrison to Cox’s Lennon/McCartney.