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Avg: 4.0 (93 ratings)
- Date Released: October 7, 2008
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Alternative
- Label: Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
San Francisco's weirdest and most loveable band
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We Say...
Deerhoof preceded their ninth studio album with an unusual kind of single. Instead of an MP3, the San Francisco group posted the sheet music for "Fresh Born" online, and asked listeners who wanted to hear what the new Deerhoof song sounded like to find out by performing it themselves (and sending the band the results). It was a gimmick, but a clever one — it demonstrated that their songs are actually tightly composed, no matter how splattery they sound, and that they think intently about the way their instrumental voices and Satomi Matsuzaki's tuneful, blasé soprano fit together. And that's how there came to be several dozen instant cover versions of a song whose chorus begins, "Mini body S.O.S. dotty/ Downy hairy tiptoeing moony."
After a couple of years as a trio, Deerhoof have added second guitarist Ed Rodriguez for Offend Maggie. More than ever, they're constructing their songs around jolting contrasts — not just loud vs. quiet or conventional riffs vs. dissonant tone-clusters, but the contrast between operating according to the standard principles of hard rock and utterly shunning those principles. Hard rock is loud and grand; Deerhoof alternate precise, headbanging riffs with reserved, blurry smears of sound. Hard rock is macho and concrete in its meaning; Matsuzaki's voice and delivery couldn't be less like a grown man's, and her lyrics, sometimes in Japanese and sometimes in curious English, are somewhere between impressionistic and totally abstract.
It's something of a tradition for Deerhoof albums to start with a full-throttle riff-rocker, and this time "The Tears and Music of Love" slams like Houses of the Holy-era Zep. (Drummer Rob Saunier, the only constant member of the band since its inception in the early '90s, gets extra credit for his body-slam timekeeping.) So, naturally, most of the album stands in contrast to it: the wobbling squeal-and-crawl of "Buck and Judy," a tiny acoustic interlude called "Don't Get Born," a piece called "Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back" that disassembles what might once have been a straightforward riff and spreads its pieces out to admire. The harmonies at the beginning of "Family of Others" are the closest Deerhoof have ever come to the Beach Boys — which isn't that close, granted. Few bands are both this weird and this easy to love. -
They Say...
More expansive than Friend Opportunity, not quite as sprawling as The Runners Four, Offend Maggie is among Deerhoof's most balanced albums. However, that doesn't convey the sense of adventure that courses through every track. "The Tears and Music of Love" begins the album with emphatic guitars that turn mischievous and a shape-shifting melody that keeps changing right up to the song's end. Offend Maggie is one of Deerhoof's most riff-filled albums since Apple O', thanks to the addition of second guitarist Edward Rodriguez to the fold: power chords set off the flute-like purity of Satomi Matsuzaki's voice on "My Purple Past," and the acoustic strumming on "Don't Get Born" makes its brevity all the more striking. The band brings both of theses sounds together brilliantly on "Offend Maggie" itself, which moves from a briskly lilting acoustic figure that recalls a sped-up John Fahey or Ali Farka Touré to plugged-in chugging, while Matsuzaki sings about a telemarketing romance gone wrong over rollicking drums. That Deerhoof can pack so much appeal and inventiveness into two minutes shows, once again, that they don't so much "go pop" as remake pop in their own image. Elsewhere, Offend Maggie gives equal time to the charming but not too cutesy Deerhoof with the hyper-expressive "Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back," where Matsuzaki becomes the ball as she describes how the players dance and weave on the court, and "Snoopy Waves," which buries its bubblegummy melody under drums and distortion. The more challenging Deerhoof surfaces on "Eaguru Guru," which name-checks the German prog rock band Guru Guru and nods to prog with its massive keyboards and guitars, intricate rhythms, and suite-like movements. "Fresh Born"'s towering bassline and spiraling guitars make it Deerhoof's version of funk-rock, while "This Is God Speaking"'s distorted vocals and rinky-dink electronics sound like an homage to Experimental Dental School. The introspective Deerhoof get their due on "Family of Others," where a spooky intro gives way to John Dieterich's vocal harmonies, rippling guitars, and meditations on interconnectedness, and on "Jagged Fruit"'s jazzy, moody finality. While Offend Maggie isn't as dramatic a change from what came before it as Friend Opportunity and The Runners Four were, its subtler changes and elaborations make it far from predictable -- other than that, it's another consistently interesting Deerhoof album.
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| 01. |  |
The Tears and Music of Love |
3:58 |
|
| 02. | |
Chandelier Searchlight |
3:31 |
|
| 03. | |
Buck and Judy |
3:26 |
|
| 04. | |
Snoopy Waves |
2:05 |
|
| 05. | |
Offend Maggie |
2:03 |
|
| 06. | |
Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back |
2:36 |
|
| 07. | |
Don't Get Born |
0:49 |
|
| 08. | |
My Purple Past |
3:49 |
|
| 09. | |
Family of Others |
2:48 |
|
| 10. | |
Fresh Born |
3:35 |
|
| 11. | |
Eaguro Guro |
4:01 |
|
| 12. | |
This Is God Speaking |
1:15 |
|
| 13. | |
Numina o |
3:40 |
|
| 14. | |
Jagged Fruit (Instrumental) |
5:49 |
|
14 Total Tracks, 43:25 Total Length
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Credits
- John Dieterich - Performer // John Dieterich - Mixing // Eli Crews - Vocal Engineer // Jay Pellicci - Engineer // Ian Pellicci - Engineer // Greg Saunier - Performer // Greg Saunier - Mixing // Tomoo Gokita - Drawing // Satomi Matsuzaki - Performer // Satomi Matsuzaki - Mixing // Ed Rodriguez - Performer // Ed Rodriguez - Mixing // Hodaka Hamada - Layout Design
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