The Deer have built a devoted audience for their uninhibited, cosmic indie folk the old fashioned way: playing their hearts out, night after night. The band formed in the college town of San Marcos, Texas just half an hour south of Austin, where the members attended Texas State University and where singer/co-songwriter Grace Rowland lived on a farm. They cultivated a fervent presence in Texas Hill Country, playing the likes of Kerrville Folk Festival and Old Settler’s Music Festival, and collaborating often with local staples like Bayonne’s Roger Sellers and players from Asleep at the Wheel and fellow festival act Elephant Revival. The Deer expanded to the national stage with extensive headlining and support slots for Big Thief and The Head and The Heart. Their label debut Do No Harm, released in 2019, marked a set of career breakthroughs, topping the KUTX chart and earning a nomination for the Austin Music Awards’ Album of the Year. When live music took global pause, The Deer had momentum to sort.
The five musicians took the energy historically reserved for tour into the studio, a pressure cooker not only for creativity, but newly, for existential contemplation. The result is two full albums, the first of which, The Beautiful Undead, will be released September 9th on tastemaking indie label Keeled Scales. It’s a rollicking collection reflecting upon what it means to lose your sense of purpose. The Deer, amidst turbulent assessment, transformed a paralyzing void into an empowering surrender of ego—an exuberant submission to the immense unpredictability of existing.
Throughout the album, The Deer maintain the modern folk flutter and Mazzy Star melodiousness they’re known for, but infuse those delicate bones with emotional tension, and indulge a new sonic edge. Enlivened by multi-dimensional instrumentation—synths, fiddle, mandolin, electric and acoustic guitars, slide guitar, piano, upright bass, and even mellotron populate the record—The Deer’s full arrangements shift their sound to an impressive pocket between Fleetwood Mac and Big Thief. The Beautiful Undead is luminous, boisterous, and invigorating; a free-spirited album fueled by hard-earned revelation.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout track “Bellwether,” one of the band’s odes to the profundity of refined love. The song finds The Deer straying from their folk roots with a work of shimmering indie rock that captures the beauty of falling love. Rowland’s vocals shine while commingling with the rich instrumentals that convey a lush and dreamy soundscape that wraps around the listener like a warm blanket. Though they are still relatively under the radar, “Bellwether” offers further prove that The Deer are absolutely ready for their moment in the spotlight.
Grace Rowland describes the inspiration behind the song:
“This song is meant to mirror the plunging, reeling feeling of falling in love. Love is a series, a pattern that’s cyclical and develops upon itself like a fractal.”
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