Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?

Deerhunter - Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
Critic Score
Based on 34 reviews
2019 Ratings: #303 / 805
User Score
Based on 796 ratings
2019 Rank: #607
Liked by 11 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Skinny
The slow, crumbling decline of civilisation has rarely sounded so good.
90
God Is in the TV

Perhaps the plurality of the way we consume media has denied Cox the reactiveness that he has lamented and talked about at length around the release of WHEAD?, but in the context of Deerhunter’s catalogue it takes 15 years of oscillating and condenses everything that makes this band great into about 40 minutes. On those terms, it’s absolutely essential.

90
Clash
What ties it all together is that it is so unmistakably Deerhunter without sacrificing any of their mythos or crucial genetic makeup.
90
Exclaim!
They continue to look forward and create music that feels unlike anything else out there. This one is no exception: it's the perfect antidote for these bleak, modern times.
85
Northern Transmissions

They’ve made a huge leap with Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?.

85
The Line of Best Fit

While time will decide whether it’s the best Deerhunter album, WHEAD? can lay claim to being the most ‘Deerhunter’ Deerhunter album. It’s utterly, completely, resolutely and defiantly them. It’s futuristic but warm, nostalgic but distant, pretentious but human.

80
Pitchfork
Though the band is now squarely in its pop era, the nostalgia that laced its early records has morphed into a timely, fatalistic vision of the future and national decay.
80
The Independent
This is a new side of Deerhunter that gives the listener much to contemplate.
80
Uncut

Part eco-lament, part eulogy for emotion, part reflection on the 24-hour news cycle in the age of Trump and the threat of nationalism, on WHEAD? Cox delivers a fairly stark status update for humanity ... but sugars the pill by wrapping the message in some of Deerhunter’s prettiest songs to date

80
The Guardian

Unpredictability is a rare and rather valuable commodity in a world of media-trained personalities and music dictated by the metrics of streaming services, and it’s something Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? has in abundance.

80
Loud and Quiet
In thirty-seven minutes, it offers up a plethora of intelligently crafted societal takes and yet presents them invitingly enough that, if you’re so inclined, you can just let the music wash over you. Deerhunter are not here to prescribe you a message; they’re asking you a question, and giving you a choice.
80
DIY
Deerhunter have often dealt in lofty, intense blows, but on album eight, they provide a breezy distraction from the chaos outside, and it’s most welcome.
80
Drowned in Sound
Its strangeness is all-pervasive, yet understated. It‘s Deerhunter’s quietest record to date, and not exactly lacking in hooks ... And yet everything’s ineffably odd – the instrumentation is pointedly off your expectations, sometimes like old Deerhunter transposed into a dusty bucolic, sometimes like nothing they’ve ever done before.
80
PopMatters

Deerhunter's eighth studio album wrestles with escapist and confrontational impulses, and continues their exploration of shifting sonic identity.

80
AllMusic

From the weariness and wonder in its title to the mix of delicacy and anger in its songs, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? is one of Deerhunter's most haunting and thought-provoking albums.

80
NME

This is how you turn pop into art.

80
No Ripcord

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? marks their third album since they regrouped, and setting aside the individual merits of both Monomania and Fading Frontier, it's the first where they provide a clearer understanding of how they function during their second phase as a unified piece.

80
Under the Radar
Underneath it all, Deerhunter are still a band that are completely beholden to music's ability to spiritually transcend even the worst state of things. If you really pay attention, you will be infected by this attitude, eat some hummus, and maybe start something yourself.
75
Consequence of Sound

Though less immediate, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? still bristles with the spirit that makes Deerhunter’s work mystifying. Along with Fading Frontier, the album presents a new era for Deerhunter, one more contemplative and spacious yet continually beguiling.

75
A.V. Club
Though it’s loaded thematically with 21st-century tension, the album doesn’t cater to average, present-day attention spans. To experience it fully means immersing yourself in the dream, which takes some thoughtful listening—it favors hypnotism in place of catchiness, and Cox’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics are often cryptic, nearly opaque.
75
GIGsoup
Deerhunter have clearly reached their pop faze but only time will tell if they can make the breakthrough that has thus far eluded them.
75
Spectrum Culture

In finding the loneliness and rage of others, Cox broadens his lyrical palette while remaining fundamentally opaque and just out of reach.

75
Pretty Much Amazing

Certainly their best album since Halcyon Digest. Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? finds Deerhunter painting airbrush-soft landscapes for the subtle and quiet hours.

70
Slant Magazine

This is a Deerhunter album, so closer listening reveals much more going on beneath the surface. To be fair, though, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? isn’t as viscerally challenging as many of the band’s prior efforts.

68
Paste
Any trauma that resides below the surface is masked in a haze of harpsichord, mellotron, piano, bells and an uplifting approach that belies the underlying issues.
65
The 405

It would be nice if Deerhunter had a clearer plan of attack on nostalgia culture, but instead WHEAD? boils down to merely a really nice sounding pop rock record.

58
Sputnikmusic

The pleasures on Disappeared are highly attenuated: almost every good melodic or structural idea is cushioned in some greater manifestation of banality or aggravation.

50
The Needle Drop

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared is hands-down the blandest entry in Deerhunter's discography.

50
Tiny Mix Tapes

Like ghosts that don’t know they’re dead, the songs on Deerhunter’s Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? wander about in a well-produced limbo almost in mourning for the death they can’t die. But they don’t know it, so — and this is the saddest part about it — they become what they deplore, all loss glossed over.

40
Crack Magazine

Tired indie tropes – wilderness metaphors and twee imagery about village greens and country roads – keep resurfacing, like a New Year’s resolution that has quickly slid away to be replaced by the same stale habits.

ElectricMess
70

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? may not reinvent the wheel, but by refining the themes and upbeat sonic palettes that made their previous outing intriguing, Deerhunter come through with their most compelling record since Halcyon Digest.

Favorite Tracks: What Happens To People? (seriously this song is one of their best), Futurism, No One's Sleeping, Plains, Death in Midsummer, Element

Least Favorite Track: Detournement

Strangelightsyd
60

My mom was telling me yesterday about how on CBC radio they played some singles from this album as part of their "taste tester" segment and people really didn't like it because it was so sad... Yet here I am, having so much fun! Sure, the lyrics are sad, this IS Bradford Cox we're talking about, but it has such a fresh and fun sound. This is possibly Deerhunter'smost upbeat album (from the ones I've heard) and I am all here for it! Finally, 2019 has begun!

morningsbell
79

Nothing special but still good for the soul

Raiksheen
70

Approved

JakerpGuy
66

You're not gonna be Vampire Weekend lil bro

blazznambertooo
49

This album feels like a drier, more lost middle-ground between "Fading Frontier" and maybe their more experimental albums. But the issue is, it takes from the worst parts of both. It is similarly simplistic like Frontier, but features less instrumental quirks and catchy songs, and the experimentation really falls flat with very goofy synthwork all over this thing, as well as some awful pitch-shifting on a song like "Détournement". Really just a mess of an album sadly, ... read more

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Track List

1Death in Midsummer
4:22
89
2No One's Sleeping
4:25
79
3Greenpoint Gothic
2:02
68
4Element
2:59
77
5What Happens to People?
4:16
92
6Détournement
3:25
48
7Futurism
2:51
88
8Tarnung
3:07
64
9Plains
2:13
87
10Nocturne
6:24
71
Total Length: 36 minutes
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Added on: April 19, 2018