Deerhoof

For a band that seems to thrive on collapse, it’s simply amazing thatthis US/Japanese quartet is now celebrating their 31st year. ThoughDeerhoof long ago established itself as one of the greatest rockgroups ever to stride the earth—and if you think that’s hyperbole, youhaven’t seen them live—the furiously inventive quartet releases newalbums on the schedule of a young band still hungry for its first break.Each one discovers some previously unknown combination of candy-coated hard-rock riffs and free-jazz percussive freakouts, sideways J-pop hooks and fearsome dissonance, trenchant social commentaryand surrealist humor. Fronting it all is Satomi Matsuzaki’s inimitablealto, whose plainspoken calm can seem strangely outside of theband’s maelstrom. This music is joyful and foreboding, cybernetic anddeeply human, carrying an implicit note of defiant optimism in theirrefusal to bow to convention or received wisdom.Deerhoof is definedby such paradoxes.