Deerhoof Vs. Evil

Real talk, hipsters - does anyone actually enjoy the sound of Satomi Matsuzaki's voice? Any Deerhoof fan (and I loosely include myself in this category) will tell you that there's more than enough compensatory musical joy in every other element of a Deerhoof record to make up for whatever issues you have with Matsuzaki's neutered Ono wail. But is there anyone who sits there listening and thinks to themselves, "Man, I love hearing this childlike Asian woman sing!" My theory about Deerhoof has always been that the experimental-noise-rocker-bros who started the band recruited Matsuzaki because they were worried about their indie cred - Deerhoof may jam together shards of music into complex and unpredictable song structures, but those shards are pretty straightforward grabs from psychedelic rock and pop and things that aren't abrasive at all! So they throw a cra-aaaa-zy sounding Asian lady into the mix to instantly up their weird factor, which always struck me as a touch Orientalist and icky.

In any case, the rest of Deerhoof generally pulls off things that can be exhilarating, and their latest album Deerhoof vs. Evil has the explosive creativity of much of their best work (not to mention toned down weirdness in Satomi's vocals). I haven't spent too much time with this album yet, but it's already clear that this is a very, very solid piece of work that combines unclassifiable genre-melding with off-kilter time signatures and killer songwriting. Cases in point linked below: "The Merry Barracks" finds vicious riffs and guitar spasms at war while straight-up hummable melodies waft above it all. "Super Duper Rescue Heads!", on the other hand, is a relatively straight-forward synth-powered pop track with some meaty electric guitar work that helps to cut the song's overall sweetness. I'll even go as far as to classify it as chillwave, because it's basically gotten to the point where anything with a synth gets that label tacked onto it, and I'm a big fan of lazily latching on to trends.

Deerhoof - "The Merry Barracks"


Deerhoof - "Super Duper Rescue Heads"