Deerhoof are the 21st century version of The Fall. For the uninitiated, they have an almost off-puttingly large back catalogue of wayward and ecstatic noise pop to wade through, and they’re also a band who play by their own rules. Acerbic, angular, and in a seemingly constant state of aural transmutation, the four piece from San Francisco suture together a disparate array of sounds and influences to create something that’s both beguiling and wildly distinctive. They are, however, not for the faint of heart. For casual observers they could be described – quite rightly – as a tricky proposition. So thank the maker that we’re above such reductive thinking about music.
Noble and Godlike in Ruin is their 20th studio album and revels in the band’s sheer energy and habitual shapeshifting (aural tone, genre tropes, and dizzying time signatures), while being wrapped up in their general skittishness. Behind the seeming mess of obtuse and lackadaisical guitar hooks, free jazz drumming, and Satomi Matsuzaki’s inimitable yet infantile vocal delivery lies a cogent (though not always immediately coherent) and fierce political message. Beneath the surface level’s joy and exuberance lurks a darker side with lyrics that delve into immigration and alienation. Deerhoof, friends, are pissed off. For a band whose work exists within a liminal space of their own creation, Noble and Godlike in Ruin is pointed, sometimes painful, but always righteous.
The album opens with “Overrated Species Anyhow” which has an undeniably great title and comes across like “The Star-Spangled Banner” on high dosage Mogadon – it’s a woozy, bleary call to arms for all the dispossessed, diasporic people as Matsuzaki wants them to know they are seen – “Love to all my aliens / Lost despised or feared / You are why / I wrote these passages.” It’s the prologue to the album as a whole, an overview of the thematic focus of the record and one that comes full circle on the album’s closer, “Immigrant Songs”.
“Overrated Species Anyhow” suggests a more sombre, introspective Deerhoof (which would be no bad thing, truth be told) but any fears about a lack of verve which is central to their identity are soon assuaged with “Sparrow Sparrow” and “Kingtoe” which both have almost nursery rhyme hooks at their core. It’s the band’s ability to cover serious narrative themes and messages underneath fractured and shifting musical earworms that set them apart from the rest of the field, and for which they should be rightfully applauded.
“A Body of Mirrors” opens with disquieting drones, akin to a horror film soundtrack that Deerhoof clearly need to write next. They’ve never sounded so regal and so bereft of their usual zest for life. It’s operatic, glacial, and damn well far too short. As the centrepiece to the album, it’s breathtaking in its brevity and assuredness. It’s lush in its timbre, and almost funereal in pace and it’s thrilling to hear a band in their fourth decade push themselves into new territories.
The record, like many others within Deerhoof’s arsenal, covers an array of genre tropes and sounds. “Return of the Return of the Fire Trick Star” weaves its way like a distorted and bastardised Minneapolis funk tune, while “Disobedience” feels like Nine Inch Nails jamming with Kiran Leonard (a collaboration we’d all love to hear, even if we don’t know it yet). For the casual observer, this is a main issue with Deerhoof. Instantly recognisable, yet never willing to sit within one musical domain long enough for the listener to feel comfortable. They can never be accused of being complacent, but in a world of clear-cut categories and demographics it’s hard to place the band within a restricting – though necessary for some – label which is absolutely one of the best things about them.
Any album with an appearance from Saul Williams is worth your time, and “Under Rats” is a highpoint of the record. It’s a jittery, anxiety-inducing track about climate catastrophe where Williams’ breathless delivery opines that “Being and becoming with no end is unsustainable / Blood and oil, drainable / Name all the unnameable” while Greg Saunier’s loose but metronomic drumming is enough to carry the rap on its own. The vocal interplay between Williams’ voice-of-god approach and Matsuzaki’s seeming vulnerability is an absolute joy. And that’s a key phrase of the album as a whole – absolute joy. Yes, the subject matter is serious but there’s an optimism at the core of the album which centres on recognising the flaws in the system, checking one’s privilege where it exists, and acknowledging a sense of unity that we need to survive.
There’s a real crackle of energy to the tracks as they twist and turn in on themselves, a seemingly disparate bunch of songs which perfectly reflect the human condition – always different, always the same (as John Peel once said of The Fall). “Immigrant Songs” has a four-to-the-floor beat, an easy to follow guitar riff, and an actual chorus – Deerhoof’s general sense of obfuscation is thrown away to show that (to paraphrase and recontextualise Stewart Lee a little) they can write songs, they just choose not to. It ends on a beautiful cacophony of noise that feels like a cathartic abandonment of the shackles of responsibility that comes with being a truthsayer.
The album arrives with impeccable timing. The rapidly emerging machinations of the fascist theocracy in the United States of AmeriKKKa (mark my words and open your eyes, people) is currently courting eugenicist ideas with, amongst a number of things, the developing war on autism. They’re collecting private medical records, FFS! Maybe we all need to refamiliarise ourselves with the concept of humanity, of shared experience, and the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller to redress the slide into despotism that’s happening before our very eyes.
Noble and Godlike in Ruin sees Deerhoof create a mesmeric yet fundamentally angry album that’s a patchwork quilt of affirmations about cultural identity and unity. The title stems from a quote in Frankenstein about poor ol’ Victor, and the album’s cover is a collage of the faces of the four band members – something recognisably beautiful is created from a mess. It can be seen as a comment on the fractured and dislocated cultural and political spheres of the post-postmodern era where authenticity seems like just another quaint and outdated idea; originality of thought and action are transposed to a mere idiom and potential advertising slogan or meme. Overall, Noble and Godlike in Ruin is a wonder.
Deerhoof, never change.
