Deerhoof - ‘The Runners Four’ Released 17/10/05 (ATP Recordings)

Matt Groening likes them.  And Karen O.  So did John Peel.  We’re obviously not talking about Kasabian here.  This is Deerhoof, darlings of the Pacific North West Scene, equal parts Stereolab, 60s avant garde and Sonic Youth, fronted by the Far East’s answer to Kate Bush.  They’ve followed up two albums of warped sugar pop with their most experimental work yet, and at 20 tracks long there’s a hell of a lot going on.  There’s nothing for our mortal ears here.  Stick to your ‘Unemployment’ and ‘Hot Fuss’.

 …but hang on, we WANT to hear something that challenges us!  A record that reveals a little bit more of the band’s soul with every rewarding listen, that captures a band at their most playful, even catchiest, and yet is willing to twist the music into bizarre new shapes as if playing the whole thing back through some kind of sonic kaleidoscope?  Well, this is THAT record.  If Deerhoof’s last album ‘Milk Man’ was some sort of ornate Japanese garden; then ‘The Runners Four’ is that garden overgrown, unadulterated yet greener, more savage yet more vital. 

Nugget after nugget of nu-psychedelia hit the places other garage rockers cannot reach; ‘Wrong Time Capsule’ sounds like Graeme Coxon whacking out space R’n’B licks while Satomi muses high-pitched on time travel (‘Skip the Waves/Syncopate/Forwards, Backwards!’).  ‘Siriustar’ sees the four-piece at their heaviest, recalling Pixies at their most unrestrained, while the male-sung ‘Odyssey’ sets a classically-themed monologue over a Syd Barrett-y folk strum.  It’s not the only literary allusion on the album – elsewhere they’re setting Keats to Talking Heads-style funk on ‘Spirit Ditties Of No Tone’ (these guys walk the walk, Ms Bedingfield).  The real standout however is the mighty ‘Running Thoughts’, speeding us through DJ Shadow breaks to Krautrock via ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ and ‘Hocus Pocus’ in the space of 4 minutes (an epic track length by this album’s standards).  It’s that first narcotic hit that keeps you going back for more and, from there, on to darker, harder things, such as the sound of a ZX Spectrum computer overheating over the fucked-up guitars of ‘RRRRRRRight’.

It’s difficult to pick fault with an album that marries pop simplicity with intellectual precision to damn-near perfection.  However, if we’re being really picky, it’s really bloody hard to make out a word of what Satomi’s going on about half the time, and her raw-as-sushi, wailing delivery on some tracks won’t be to everyone’s taste (a bit like sushi, in fact).  There is also a free-form jazz Deerhoof bursting to get out at times, as on ‘Bone Dry’ and interlude ‘News From A Bird’, tracks which don’t really add anything other than, well, more notes to the album.  Really though, that’s a little bit like complaining that a bottle of wine is too big.  Besides, if it’s good enough for Karen O & Co., then it’s good enough for the rest of us, no?  ‘The Runners Four’, then: cult classic-in-waiting.