The Fawn Becomes A Deer

Deerhoof released seven albums before they got to Friend Opportunity, what appears to be a record spawned out of the benefit of hindsight. Their last record, The Runners Four, was undoubtedly the band’s crowning achievement in 2005. Friend Opportunity takes the formula Deerhoof created with their previous recordings and improves on it.Milk Man’s title track was once the band’s greatest pop melody but Friend Opportunity’s “Believe E.S.P.,” “The Perfect Me,” “The Galaxist,” and “Matchbook Seeks Maniac” all match or surpass it in catchiness and originality. Each treads the fine line between being a pop song flavored with noise-rock experimentation and a noise pretending to have a pop structure. Whichever way each song goes, the result is confusing yet fascinating. One of Friend Opportunity’s more tonally diverse tracks, “Cast Off Crown,” even features the refreshing and underused male voice of drummer Greg Saunier.

ame Deerhoof often partners a melodic track with one that harkens back to their noisier ‘90s. “Wither the Invisible” is a soft song on which singer Satomi Matsuzaki is beautifully accompanied by just a piano and an orchestral background; “Look Away” seems as though it is recorded by an entirely different group ferociously bashing on their instruments with sporadic interruptions for 11 minutes while Matsuzaki babbles unintelligibly.

ame Deerhoof are as groundbreaking aesthetically as they are musically. Friend Opportunity has 12 covers within its packaging by Scottish artist David Shrigley. During the time of vinyl LPs, album art was a hugely important part of a record. Now, in the digital downloading age, take Deerhoof’s bait and actually go to a record store to pick up Friend Opportunity in hard copy.