Deerhoof: Future Teenage Cave Artists

- Hey look, it's a new Deerhoof record! Their sixteenth, in fact! How does it sound? It sounds like Deerhoof, and yet it sounds different to every Deerhoof record so far – and in that way it sounds like every Deerhoof record so far.

Every band worth their salt wants to create some kind of unique, identifiable sound. Not necessarily to be groundbreaking trailblazers, but at least put their own characterful wrinkle on familiar genres. Deerhoof have spent over twenty-five years now traipsing all over rock'n'roll, taking pieces of whatever fancies them and blending it all together in a way that is always unmistakably their own. A bit of classic rock here, some R'nB there, a bit of salsa, some experimental noise, a dash of electro-pop, maybe a dose of avant-garde minimalism for good measure. They jump from one thing to another from song to song, even riff to riff, contrasting one style against another in a way that turns your head so fast you'll snap your neck. When they take a style and make it their own, they still sound like themselves: they're playing Deerhoof's version of classic rock, Deerhoof's version of indie-pop, Deerhoof's version of salsa. Somehow, they've turned that formula (although it never becomes formulaic) into one of the more consistent discographies in indie-rock.

So, what about the new one, Future Teenage Cave Artists? For one thing, it takes the disconcerting aural about-faces that have become Deerhoof's trademake to ever more extreme heights. Take the track 'New Orphan Asylum For Spirited Deerchildren' for example: it starts out with a bass-heavy R'n'B stomp underneath singer Satomi Matsuzaki's childlike vocals for about thirty seconds, then abruptly shifts into a pumping double-time riff with woozy guitars that seemingly has no relation to the opening section, then switches back to run through both parts again, before the bottom completely drops out of the song for a static filled noise break, which finally segues into a sea-sick guitar outro underneath drummer Greg Saunier's soft falsetto for the final minute of the song. It's indicative of much of the record's internal logic – on first listen it sounds like utter confusion, but soon enough everything starts to make its own absurd sense.

Future Teenage Cave Artists also sees Deerhoof returning to some of the noisiness and chaos of some of their earlier work, such as turn-of-the-millenium records like Halfbird and Reveille. There's a rawness to the sounds that we haven't heard on a Deerhoof record for a while now, with the album having a bit of a scrapbook aesthetic – there's not much attempt to tidy things up, and apparently the record is largely comprised of rough recordings that were originally intended as mere demos, and as such instruments were often recorded via whatever was handy in the moment, things like laptop microphones and smartphones. With that said, this is still musically very much in keeping with the most recent run of records that left off with 2017's Mountain Moves, with Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich's furious guitar work riding over Saunier's maximalist grooves on a minimalist drumkit to fairly unmistakable effect.

The other notable aspect of Future Teenage Cave Artists is that it's Deerhoof's most overtly political album thus far, something that's been a growing part the band's music for a few albums now. Although it might not always be obvious given their lyrical economy, there are songs here about parents actions being in opposition to their own childrens' survival, about the corporatisation of art, about losing loved ones to ideological divides. It gets dark, real dark by their standards. And yet, because it's Deerhoof it lifts you up. Even in the record's melancholy final third, you'll be pumping your fist as you're dragged down.

- Cameron Smith.
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