I note by way of introduction that for some reason a lot of people poo-poo this now in favor of See You on the Other Side. I don't get it myself.
Keep in mind I'm speaking from the perspective of being as close to an original Rev fan from the earliest days as it gets -- and I'll have other things to say about that later in this list. For me, Deserter's was and is the Great Return, not some sort of 'new American majesty' or whatever the rags were trying to say in a bizarre and desperate attempt to turn the Rev into a new Band or something (and while Garth Hudson and Levon Helm are on the album, to be sure, I detect more a vibe than a continuation, if you will). It's where the band went from being very good to stunningly great again. Simple as that.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that the opening three songs make up one of the best album intros ever, of course. Oh does it ever. "Holes" practically wafts into being, finding rhythm almost by accident, Jonathan Donahue's wracked voice floating away on the winds, and crescendoing not with a blast but with a rise, where it's musical saw more than anything else carrying the build. "Tonite it Shows" would anywhere else be some sort of bemused attempt at regarding love somehow or somewhere, perhaps. Here it sounds like the start of some strange, unexpected movie, the orchestrations sneaking around the song, Donahue wondering about "the way you lit your cigarette." "Endlessly," meanwhile, sounds like a strange orchestration from one of those pre-/proto-Disney other-studios animations with dancing flowers and goofy country parties, only bizarrely stoned out so that the backing vocals aren't as charming as they are flat out weird, and the music vamps on "Silent Night" at that.
From there it just keeps going. Strings everywhere, lots of treble -- Grasshopper mentioned in an interview I did that such was the very intentional plan of the band, to try it this time that way and to not worry about rocking out so much per se, though they can in a nicely removed not-quite-there sense. Admittedly there's "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp," and considering the Chemical Brothers remixed it, something is not simply a matter of navel-gazing. Neo-psychedelic, sure, I guess, but it sounds like it could have been recorded at any one of a number of periods in recent history, while hardly stopping at the sixties. This is a good thing.
Picking out perfect moments is hard here. I could consider two of the short instrumentals, the hollow mournfulness of "I Collect Coins," all piano and distant horns, or the more shadow-ridden "Pick Up If You're There," which has that animation feeling I mentioned earlier, but this time as if the Quay Twins were back in the 1930s as well. Instead, I'll go for The Best Rock Lyric Ever, when in "Goddess In a Hiway" Donahue says that "we explode -- like two bugs -- on -- glass." A lyrical image that never existed before cars, speed, driving across interstates, and one of the best damn side products of the Industrial Revolution and its consequences around. Yet another reason to worship the Rev. ?