Atlas Sound’s Let The Blind Lead reaches out to the misfits

Let…Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel Atlas Sound Rocks like: Stereolab, Sigur Ros

out of

Before they die, victims of hypothermia often experience a period of giddy nirvana from a surge of the body’s natural painkillers.

Atlas Sound’s first effort, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel provides this kind of quasi-hallucinatory experience without the subsequent inconvenience of organ failure and cognitive shut down.

The world was a pretty cold place for young Bradford Cox. Diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by disproportionately long limbs and fingers and a predisposition to cardiovascular abnormalities, he spent his 16th summer in the hospital undergoing multiple surgeries. He learned what it meant to feel freakish and alone. The Atlas Sound project was conceived when Cox was still a teenager, after he discovered multi-tracking while messing around with his parents’ karaoke machine.

In a recent interview with Pitchfork, Cox called himself “an odd-looking guy who is not afraid to bend the rules for what is acceptable for someone of my stature.”

Cox seems to have found a way to transcend his perceived shortcomings and reach people through his music. He has also found a way to shelter himself from a world that’s often frigid.

On Let the Blind Lead, he makes himself a kind of igloo, inviting others inside so he can show them how to “feel” the world as a pariah does. And igloos, for those who have never experienced them, can be surprisingly inviting places.

The album gives off the swirling, psychedelic feel of Deerhunter’s Cryptograms, but the band’s rock elements have been, for the most part, vacuumed out of Cox’s solo project.

Setting up listeners for a haunting album that deals with escapism, deformity and abandonment, “A Ghost Story” opens Let the Blind Lead.

Here, a little boy (perhaps a reincarnation of young Cox himself) gives a sputtering, nasally narration about “a ghost named Charlie,” which ends as the song blossoms into a trippy acoustic finish.

The album continues at the pace of falling snowflakes. On a lot of tracks, Cox zeros in on a particular feeling, expanding it for three to four minutes, so that he might properly explore it.

On the soporific “Recent Bedroom,” Cox speaks about a perplexing lack of emotion: “I walked outside / I could not cry / I don’t know / I don’t know why.”

“Quarantined” tinkles with bells and glockenspiel, and it very well might be a reference to Cox’s bedridden 16th summer: “Quarantined and kept / So far away from my friends / I’m waiting to be changed.”

On “River Card,” however, Cox’s isolation appears to be self-imposed: “I won’t answer my phone / You call it all you want.” The song drifts along softly like a creepy lullaby: “River so clear and blue / I’m so in love with you / But you’ll drown me.”

Let the Blind Lead is an enormously consistent piece of art, knit together beautifully by Cox’s ethereal vocals, which are nothing short of hallucinogenic.

It’s possible not to notice the transition from one song to the next because the album progresses so naturally. “Scraping Past,” however, is the obvious standout. Cox’s faraway words seem to ooze down a sizzling surface of univox guitar: “Escape the rain that comes and goes / When it stops no one knows.”

Let the Blind Lead finishes with the title track, which fades the album into sleepy electronic oblivion.

Though almost legendary, Let The Blind Lead misses the mark in a few small ways. “On Guard” and “Winter Vacation” are as solid as pieces of a larger project, but they are skipable as singles.

Listened to straight through, however, the album is a trance-inducing masterpiece.

In all its misanthropic beauty, Let the Blind Lead essentially teaches listeners how to feel the world through the tips of Cox’s long fingers.