Deerhoof Rules! "Green Cosmos" Rocks Our World!

We had been hearing all the murmurs about Deerhoof for a while. In fact, we'd been hearing about them ever since a wintry evening in late 2002 when we headed east from the Lower East Side, across the bridge, to Williamsburg, Brooklyn with the editor of the Japanese music magazine Switch. The editor was here to do special issue about the NYC music scene and to meet some real-life New York "underground" bands like Outhud, The Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The trip to Williamsburg that night was for a photo shoot and interview with the folks who run the underground venue called Mighty Robot. Deerhoof kept popping up in the conversation about American bands. (Deerhoof is not an NYC group, but are based in San Francisco.)

Afterwards, Deerhoof kept appearing on our new-music radar, now and again mentioned by friends who uttered the band's name with beatific reverence. Later, we heard some tracks and were impressed. But, somehow, not completely blown away, that is, until now and the release of the new Deerhoof disc "Green Cosmos."

"Green Cosmos" is brilliant.

And it's one of the absolute freshest and most original discs to come out this year. (With this and M.I.A. "Arular" and the Fiery Furnaces "EP," 2005 is shaping up to be a special year for new music. We can't stop listening to this disc. At the office today, I played the whole album all the way through four times on my iPod -- and I had five meetings and a deadline!)

Tracks like the opener "Come See the Duck" might feel like more familiar territoy for hardcore fans, the track has the same start-stop aggression of your typical one-minute Melt Banana noise-punk assault.

"Spiral Golden Town" is our favorite track. It's a stunning piece of sci-fi pop that evokes epic grandeur with a playful synthetic lilt. Since "Green Cosmos" is almost completely sung Japanese, which is the first language of singer/bass-guitarist (and Tokyo native) Satomi Matsuzaki, it's a bit of a sonic landmark even for Deerhoof itself.

Essential Linkage

Deerhoof Factsheet [KillRockstars Records]

Deerhoof Bio [BlueGhost PR Website]

Posted by Supercore at June 28, 2005 03:13 PM