Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity

Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
Kill Rock Stars
Grade: A-

Deerhoof is one of those very rare musical entities that persists over time (ten full-lengths + three EPs = thirteen years of longevity), yet refuses to show any signs of its age. From all appearances, Deerhoof sounds like a band exhilarated with the unmapped prospects of its own future—like a band that is just starting out. It’s this sense of perpetual youth that gives the group its sense of daring, its willingness to be musically mutable, and its sense of sonic alchemy. Friend Opportunity comes as the follow-up to the band’s watershed The Runners Four, and as such will inevitably be scrutinized relative to its predecessor’s strengths. This may or may not account for the certain element of self-awareness in Friend Opportunity. The band seems to have sought to deliberately try for a different kind of record this time out and it works. With the departure last spring of guitarist Chris Cohen (to concentrate on his band, the Curtains), Friend Opportunity marks in some ways a return to their beginnings—think less Milk Man and more Holdypaws—and yet, is paradoxically, is still an evolutionary step forward, if not quite the statement of The Runners Four. Where the scope of that album was loose and sprawling, Friend Opportunity is only half the songs (it would be a great deal shorter if not for the twelve minute closer “Look Away”) and incredibly dense in structure all while retaining the band’s trademark playfulness. It’s what John Dieterich, Satomi Matsuzaki, and Greg Saunier manage to squeeze into these ten songs that provides the listener with the first real sense of their new album’s hidden depths. It will probably take multiple listens to find or discover all the subtleties in songs like “The Perfect Me”, or my personal favorite, “Believe ESP”, not because they’re buried under layers and layers of tracks, but because everything is masterfully blended in service of the song itself. Deerhoof have always had a knack for juggling that rare pop feat of pop feats—they lure you in with their catchy hooks, and then keep you guessing at how the music works behind those hooks. It wasn’t until the third or fourth listen that I realized that part of the ‘slight of hand’ behind “Believe ESP” is the timpani-like drum sounds on its chorus/bridge/B part (traditional labels are difficult to apply to Deerhoof’s song structures – do these songs even have choruses?). A good pop album works through its ability to connect to its audience through the subconscious—we don’t know how it’s working but we know that it works. Or to just put this all in another way, Deerhoof creates music for people who like music. They are a band’s band.