Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity

Oft times, music bears a striking resemblance to food. Imagine all of the parallels - pop radio is like candy (you think it tastes good and is harmless, but it’s quite damaging), rock and roll is like a cheeseburger and fries (it can be bland and cliche, but great versions of the dish still exist), southern rock is like fried anything (you know it’s not good for you, but damn it tastes good), and country music is like Mom’s home cooking (it might not be fine dining, but when it’s good, it’s really good). It’s enough to make you wonder what other allusions you can make (without engaging in some really ugly stereotyping). Where does hip-hop/rap stand (and do I have to separate East Coast v. West Coast v. Dirty South)? Doesn’t Britpop sound better than most British food tastes? And how in the world does one even begin to categorize indie rock (besides referring to it as the tofu of the music world - better for you, but not everyone can acquire a taste for it)?

Then along comes a group like Deerhoof. Here’s a band whose possesses sonic tastes and textures that threatens to totally throw off one’s musical palate. For more than a decade now, the voice of Satomi Matzusaki has confounded pop music aficionados with her heavily-accented voice in that, as exotic as it might be, it still seems to blend with the beats, riffs, and jams compiled by the three guys in the group (guitarist John Dieterich, drummer Greg Saunier, and guitarist Chris Cohen, who left the band in 2006 to record with his band, The Curtains). It’s as if the band wants to intentionally mess with your musical mind by drawing you in with their talent, confusing you with Satomi’s vocal technique, and then compelling you to keep listening as you wonder just where the album will progress next.

So, when Friend Opportunity was released in January, I was curious to see where the band was headed now that they had been reduced to a three-piece. Would they continue with the more straight-ahead rock of The Runners Four or would they bend more towards the quirky psychedelia of Reveille? Well, much to my pleasant surprise, it seems that Deerhoof has placed themselves upon a middle path that embraces both versions of the group, while not watering down their signature aesthetic. With songs like “The Perfect Me,” “Believe E.S.P.,” and “Cast Off Crown,” the band is more than willing to craft a sound that tears down one’s conception of what indie rock is supposed to be as it blissfully and wildly pulls in influences from jazz, prog rock, and soul (just listen to those horn arrangements and keyboard swells).

So, much to my chagrin, when I listened to the album through several times, I began to realize that this album left me wanting more than what it provided, which can be good thing. You want people to want more of your music whenever an album is over, but when the core of this album (the first nine songs) is not-quite 25 minutes long (the 10th song is a rambling, minimalist mess that clocks in at 11:45), I was left scratching my head and wondering, “And?!?! Is this all you’re giving me? Are you sure there’s not something I’m missing? Am I too dense and bound up in traditional pop music motifs to get what’s going on here?”

I was more than querulous as to why, if these nine songs are so great, are there so few of them, and, since they’re so short, why they couldn’t have embraced their prog influences a bit more tightly and recorded at least one carefully constructed song that came close to four minutes long. This album is simply too excellent to truly be this brief. Maybe the reason that my favorite Deerhoof album is The Runners Four is that it’s the most coherent and focused in its desire to both embrace and deconstruct what we think we know about good, robust, quality pop music. It is frustrating to thoroughly enjoy what one hears and to not understand exactly what just happened - and that might be exactly what attracts me to this band.

Is Friend Opportunity worth a listen? Absolutely, as it’s full of superb musicianship and is destined to make any decent listener curious as to what really makes this band tick. So, if you’re looking for a food comparison, Deerhoof is to music as haute cuisine is to food - you’re not exactly sure why the portions are so small, you’re not used to such an eccentric presentation, and it’s certainly not something the average person consumes on a regular basis. But you’re OK with that, since you enjoy what you eat, even if not enough people understand why.

Rating: 7.8

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