Deerhunter - "Memory Boy" (Live on Letterman, 2011)

Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest is one of the most celebrated indie records of the early 2010s, and often considered the creative peak of the band. If you have only a cursory knowledge of the album, you most likely would be familiar with one of its more popular tracks - perhaps the short-and-strummy "Revival," the psychedelic swirl of "Desire Lines," or the tributary closer "He Would Have Laughed." However, when Deerhunter performed on Late Show with David Letterman in February of 2011, none of these songs were featured. Instead, the band opted to perform their upcoming single, "Memory Boy," which was set for a Record Store Day release that coming April and would be the second off of Halcyon Digest. The end result was glorious.

The first thing you'll notice is that this is a very old YouTube upload - in fact, it was uploaded on February 24th of 2011, just two days after the band's performance. The video and audio are both compressed, and the clip doesn't come close to filling the screen properly. (There's a re-upload of higher quality, but this is the "classic" version that most are familiar with; plus, there's a certain charm that comes with experiencing the video as it was uploaded within its era.) After a brief intro from Paul Shaffer's house band and Letterman, the band launches straight in.

Boosted by friends from the Atlanta scene - Cole Alexander of the Black Lips on guitar and Adam Bruneau of The Back Pockets on keys and xylophone - its quickly clear that this version of "Memory Boy" is a beefed-up edition. The studio version of "Memory Boy" is a fuzzed-out, power-pop ditty clocking in at just over two minutes: two verses, two choruses, a bridge, and then a quick outro before making way for "Desire Lines." Here, Bruneau - donning dark sunglasses and a vampiric cape  - has snatched the main guitar riff for his keyboard. In doing so, he transforms it from plucky to anthemic, somehow sounding like both a carnival ride and a church organ. Frontperson Bradford Cox croons through the song as usual, with both the demeanor and fashion sense of an eccentric poetry professor from the 1970s.

Then, two minutes in, at just the point where the studio version exits with the looping final riff, "Memory Boy" takes off. Swathed in alternating blue and yellow floodlights, the band adds an entirely new coda that nearly doubles the song's runtime. Lead by the ever-steady hand of drummer Moses Archuleta, every instrument locks into a groove that builds in intensity for the next minute. Lockett Pundt introduces a brand new guitar riff. Cox produces a tambourine seemingly out of nowhere. 

Suddenly, everybody drops out. Cox tosses the tambourine aside, the lights steady. Bassist Joshua Fauver (R.I.P.) spins around from his typical back-of-stage position and faces the audience. The camera locks in on Bruneau as he returns to solo with the main riff, kicking off the celebratory new ending. Cox picks the mic back up as the rest of the band explodes back into life. (To this day I can't quite make out what he's singing - perhaps "take home" or "day gone" - but lyrics aren't typically the focus of Deerhunter's music anyway). Once they're done, Paul Shaffer chimes in that he "had an acid flashback."

Fifteen years on, "Memory Boy" is still somewhat of a footnote in Deerhunter's history. Not that either of these are the end-all-be-all of measuring a song's impact, but it has about a tenth the amount of streams as the album's hits do, and it's in the lower half on the album by track rating on Rate Your Music. But thanks to this Letterman performance, and the evolution the song took in a live setting, it remains one of my absolute favorites.