Deerhoof is an Indie Noise Rock group from San Francisco, and they’ve been dropping albums since 1996, Breakup Song being their 11th. I’m not overly familiar with their past work, including last years Deerhoof Vs. Evil, so this is my first time really observing their music. And I left this album a bit…unimpressed.
The main problem with the album is it’s combination of noise rock with a vocalist who just doesn’t seem to realize that she is singing on a noise rock album. It’s an odd, contradicting, and ultimately confusing sound. For example, on Bad Kids to the Front, these weird, dissonant synth plucks hit every few seconds, and while I don’t really care for the sound they make, they sure sound threatening. There’s also some bells and whistles, making the instrumentation loud and uninviting. But vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki has a light, bubbly, very inviting voice. It doesn’t mesh well with the instrumentation on the album, at least for me.
My distaste for this album is somewhat swayed since the sound itself bothers me. Even though the instrumentation itself is OK, a lot of the synths and electronics are just too sharp and plucky to really be inviting. The music is very unsure of what it wants to be throughout the album. Some songs hit the right note, like Mothball the Fleet, where the instrumentation manages to keep that noisy element without coming across as too complicated and messy to not compliment Matsuzaki’s voice. However, Mothball the Fleet is an exception on the album, as most of the rest of the album is just ugly noise with some sweet but forgettable vocals over it.
The songs are all pretty repetitive as well. Fête D’Adieu the album closer feels like two choruses that just keep going back and forth and back and forth. It’s kind of excruciating. Songs like this also rely way too much on the vocals (I’ll get back to that), and the instrumentation (which while not not fantastic, it is more interesting) is completely buried by melody and the production.
Satomi Matsuzaki’s voice isn’t really my cup of tea, as she’s kind of an uninteresting vocalist. Her voice stays in the same higher range the entire album, and really just sings some boring melodies over the noise rock below. The melodies are all bland, and she just repeats the same words over and over for choruses and “hooks”. To be a good noise rock vocalist, in my opinion, you have to be just as noisy as the arrangements you’re singing over, kind of like a Sleigh Bells. Here, it sounds like a little girl’s tea party backed by crashing computers and nasty guitar licks. She seems totally out of place, and even if she were in place, she’d remain a very uninteresting vocalist.
There are a few moments on this album I’d say I legitimately like. The opening of To Fly or Not to Fly is pretty captivating (Even if the rest of the song isn’t), and The Trouble With Candyhands has some weird Latin-flavored horns and is actually an enjoyable song. There are also moments, that while they kind of fall flat, are interesting through their weird and new sounds. The rest of this album, though, just doesn’t hit any of the right notes.
Summary: The combination of noise rock on and sweet vocals on Breakup Song doesn’t work at all, despite some interesting experimentation.
Choice Cuts- The Trouble With Candyhands
1.5/5
The video for Fête D’Adieu is below. Breakup Song is out now on Polyvinyl.
Vantage Point Music 