Review

Prog for kids yearning for rock ballistics but too shy to admit it
Deerhoof makes progressive rock. But where King Crimson thrilled stoned teenagers with hairy-balled showboating, Deerhoof’s complexity is more effortless and humble — prog for kids yearning for rock ballistics but too shy to admit it. Their perverse dichotomies, though, are what make Deerhoof great: they’re too mysterious to be twee, grand but never gauche — and they’re cuddly. (Experimental rock: still down on cuddling.) So they regularly present eminently mixtape-able mindfucks like “+81” or the stoned ballad “Matchbook Seeks Maniac” — poppy abrasions with the highest per-capita idea rate on the planet — while retaining a naïve optimism (and sense of fear) that Beefheart and Pere Ubu would’ve guffawed at.

Friend Opportunity, their fifth near-great album this decade, is also their most approachable. They’ve always operated at jazz-like levels of alchemy, so losing guitarist Chris Cohen should be an elemental blow. But like a blind man with unnerving olfactory prowess, loss has spawned adaptation: they’ve learned the power of overdubbing and the mileage of a slight dose of funk. With the creativity of guitar bands hitting sub-rotting fish levels, Deerhoof’s charming virtuosity — without agenda — is as progressive as it gets.