Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity Deerhoof

Later on, in the sparkly white jumpsuit days, Elvis would reach a peak moment when the music moved him so deeply, lifted him to such great heights, that there was only one thing to do: the Inverted Claw. When music makes you do that, it's a truly awesome feeling. The Inverted Claw is what Deerhoof is all about. Their exultant music draws you into the moment, and there you rejoice.
On the transcendent Friend Opportunity, the music constantly surprises: songs like "Perfect Me" have three or four sections of heart-stopping epiphanies of the sublime; "Matchbook Seeks Maniac" pulls a "99 Luftballoons" breakdown move in the middle, rocks a Brahms interval in the pop-narcotic chorus, and the Beach Boys and the Who are all over the mix — it's one of the most glorious things you’ll ever hear.
On previous albums, one of Deerhoof's main weapons was negative space—the stunning silences between beats and chords hit harder than any clang and clash of guitars and cymbals. Deerhoof were like painters who'd leave bare patches of canvas to highlight their strokes; now they're inclined to fill in every square inch, inviting us to revel in every brilliant corner. And songs like "Perfect Me," "Believe in E.S.P." and "Choco Fight" are vastly more groove-oriented—and yeah, sexy—than anything they've ever done. It's all integrated into juxtapositions that ought to be jarring but just come out astonishing.
"Believe in E.S.P." opens with Deerhoof's take on get-down funky slinkopation, but the next passage sounds like something out of Palestrina; like so many of these songs, it's a scenic drive that flows from one astonishing vista to the next, from wide, shimmering deserts to foggy canyons to staggering, snow-peaked mountaintops. As Mike Watt once said of his band the Minutemen, Deerhoof doesn't write songs, they write rivers.
Where on earth does this stuff come from? There's the towering, odd-metered guitar riffarama of Chavez, the heavy metal thunder of Stravinsky, the damaged curlicues of Gastr del Sol, the klang und schtomp of Led Zeppelin, Japan's illustrious line of breathtakingly innovative female-dominated bands like Ex-Girl and Melt Banana. And now there are those man-machine beatbox rhythms, with titanic drummer Greg Saunier outpacing the technology like a John Henry with two wooden dowels in his hands instead of a sledgehammer.
Sometimes they recall the Who—like "Underture" from Tommy or the magnificent live version of "A Quick One," a rock band doing the work of an orchestra, compelling reveries alternating with powerful rushes of sinuous melody, lyrical power-plays and Inverted Claws that clutch overwhelming joy.
But there's another important source: For at least 20 years, hip-hop has made the most outlandish, experimental music pop music has ever seen. Why can't rock music do the same thing, in its own way? So while Friend Opportunity does tangentially cite hip-hop (and various eras of rock at its most adventurous), it mostly just applies the same mindset—what if we just let our imagination run free?
Friend Opportunity is a feat of reinvention that could only come from artists willing to rethink everything. "It's like being a kid again," Saunier once told Pitchfork, "because that's what kids do all the time. Every day they're learning new things that they didn't know that they could do." Man, talk about sonic youth—Deerhoof's springs eternal.
—Michael Azerrad