ALBUM OF THE WEEK – Deerhoof – La Isla Bonita

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Deerhoof – La Isla Bonita
Upset The Rhythm
4 out of 5

When a band have put out thirteen LPs and are hitting their 20th anniversary, exploring the realms of Dadaist deconstruction and Pop reassembly, I guess you start putting things in perspective. Today, Deerhoof have more than fifteen hours of published recorded material over two decades, which is a climax of self-improvement towards the boundaries of their own stylistic perfection. La Isla Bonita, of which the title recalls – in a very Post-Modernist way – Madonna’s Latino/New Wave single of 1987, is just as far as they have elegantly pushed their frontier.

For those who saw them growing up – from the baby-creature of their debut The Man, The King, The Girl (Kill Rock Stars, 1997) to Break-up Songs (Polyvinyl, 2012), via their avant-Pop statement Reveille (Kill Rock Stars, 2002) and their turning point, i.e. the more mature Friend Opportunity (Kill Rockstars, ATP, 2007) – this brand new collection of songs should be, in a good way, no surprise. From the start, the band have disassembled and re-shaped their sound. Chopping, stitching, cutting, sampling and cobbling they have lost any sort of derivativeness and forged a distinctive sound that can only be ascribed to the encounter of four minds: Satomi Matsuzaki, John Dieterich, Ed Rodriguez and Greg Saunier.

Far from being an isolated case, when it comes to Deerhoof, one recurring concern of music writers and critics has been attempting to grasp their roots and define their music the way a record-shop keeper would, in order to fit them into the right shelf. Assuming that trying to understand Deerhoof – as much as for any good band – is just pointless and that probably all you should do is to experience their music and let yourself have some fun, there is no other way to define them other than looking at the big picture.

Drummer Greg Saunier recently declared: “No band is an island … If we hadn’t had that crazed mid-90s Bay Area Punk scene to call home, I doubt we’d still be here to chat about a 20th anniversary”. This is something you can definitely still hear in the record. Beyond that, I imagine the big picture containing a much wider landscape. It is a collage made of temporal and geographic intersections. Here you have a glimpse of Frisco, first home to Deerhoof and to a bunch of musicians on a mission of Pop and Rock deconstruction and of harmonic/disharmonic explorations. From the legendary avant-garde and multimedia artists/musicians The Residents, to the largely underestimated Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. There you have the long East-Coast avant-garde epic, a path that you can walk through and trip over the likes of Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatam, then proceed into the Bowery slums via No New York and Sonic Youth. By the time Deerhoof were born, the deconstructing mission was led across the 90s and the 2000s by fellow bands such as Gastr Del Sol, Royal Trux, Blonde Redhead and Oneida, to mention a few. For as much as these artists may sound very different from each other, they seem to be linked to a historical continuum, a flux that never stops turning around in circles without ever being predictable. Inside of the picture, Deerhoof have the merit of maintaining a conscious naivety and crafting “sense” out of “non-sense”, while managing to write fun and unconventional Pop songs.

In an interview released to The Cut Magazine in June, Greg Saunier asserted that, as language’s main purpose is not just to communicate, but to think and “create the way your head thinks”, music works the same way. This applies to both the maker and the listener, and listening to Deerhoof’s album can be a fun and mind-blowing exercise. In Tiny Bubbles you can hear a surf guitar intro recalling a Morriconesque Spaghetti Western soundtrack via Friends of Dean Martinez, which is but a false start leading into a funky beat a la Can. All is decorated with the disconnected guitar riffs of Captain Beefheart and weaved together with the naively dramatic singing of Satomi Matsuzaki. That said, you could even hear completely different things and this is probably why Deerhoof are so good. You can lose yourself to the kraut-funky beats of Paradise Girls and the cowbells of God 2, while immersed in a feeling of unpredictability. Their classic psychotic and naive lullabies are now replaced by the dream-pop landscapes of the beautiful ballad Mirror Monster. In Exit Only the band temporarily returns to its DIY Punk origins.

As for its two previous releases, La Isla Bonita is a great piece “high-fi lo-fi” production and a good “Cut Up” composition. It definitely adds some new words and expressions to the band’s unique language and it is a great way to celebrate the 20th anniversary in the Deerhoof’s saga.

Miles Prestia