Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox makes live return as Atlas Sound for first show in seven years, debuts new material

Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox has revived his Atlas Sound project for its first show in seven years, debuting eight new songs during the performance.

Cox made his return yesterday (September 20) at Philadelphia’s Making Time festival, having been announced as a surprise addition to the line-up little more than a week before the event.

Performing solo on the festival’s Transcendental Stage, he sang while playing bass, hand bells and a sampler throughout a roughly half-hour set.

He opened the show by leading the crowd in a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for his mother Edie, who was in attendance and celebrating her 80th birthday, and he also thanked Making Time founder Dave P for encouraging him to return to the stage.

“Thank you to Dave for having me because if it weren’t for him, I might’ve stayed at home for another seven years,” Cox told the audience.

Most notably, the performance was made up entirely of previously unheard material, with Cox debuting eight tracks titled ‘Octoberland’, ‘Arcadia’, ‘Akron’, ‘Day For Night’, ‘My Ship Sank In Daylight’, ‘Come And See’, ‘Roots Without A Tree’ and ‘Kora’.

Watch the full set here:

At the end of the set, Cox also handed out setlists and lyric sheets for the new tracks to members of the audience, signing copies for fans. The sheets were reportedly printed in blue ink and stamped with the word “DRAFT” in red.

Atlas Sound’s Making Time setlist was: 

‘Octoberland’ 
‘Arcadia’ 
‘Akron’ 
‘Day For Night’ 
‘My Ship Sank In Daylight’ 
‘Come And See’ 
‘Roots Without A Tree’ 
‘Kora’ 

The appearance marked the first announced Atlas Sound concert since Cox performed under the moniker at Desert Daze in 2019.

Both Atlas Sound and Deerhunter have effectively been on unannounced hiatuses since that year. Cox did briefly resurface in 2023 for what was reported to be an impromptu experimental noise performance at a vintage market in Athens, Georgia, but has otherwise remained largely out of public view.

The most recent Atlas Sound studio album remains 2011’s ‘Parallax’, Cox’s third record under the name after ‘Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel’ and ‘Logos’.

Reviewing ‘Parallax’ at the time, NME wrote that Cox had “decelerated sonically” while remaining “sublime” as a lyricist, describing the record as another step towards the musician “finding self-contentment”.

Cox subsequently remained prolific with Deerhunter throughout the remainder of the decade. The Atlanta band released ‘Monomania’ in 2013 and ‘Fading Frontier’ in 2015, with the latter receiving five stars from NME and being described as “the most direct, unflinching album Deerhunter have ever made, and quite possibly the best”.

Their eighth and most recent album, ‘Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?’, followed in 2019.