Deerhoof - 'Offend Maggie' (ATP) Released 13/10/08

The record starts. Most things are reassuringly familiar. There’s the frenzied energy, bubblegum pop moves performed at a punk pace, peppered with the band’s bold insistence there’s no need to stick with a riff, a melody or a hook for more than a few fleeting moments just because it’s ace, as there’s always more of the same dazzling stuff behind the corner, even if lesser outfits would hand over half their marketing budgets just to sniff some of the sharpest moves that briefly stun the unexpecting listener here. Singer-bassist Satomi’s high-pitched coo kicks in and yes, it’s retained that childish charm, a voice that’s not conventionally speaking the most flexible of instruments but fits in just right in this frenziedly innovative milieu.

All of the above equals some welcome news for ears battered to exhaustion by the soul-crushingly predictable, processed-to-death pap poisoning the airwaves: San Francisco’s alt-rock champs Deerhoof are back. Not that ‘Offend Maggie’ is a replica of last year’s ‘Friend Opportunity’, the streamlined dose of aural sunshine that deservedly shifted the group some layers towards the centre from the margins they’d occupied for several albums. This time around, Deerhoof – newly expanded to a four-piece – are devoted to rock. And they do the rocking exceedingly well. Deliciously ragged and raw, opener ‘The Tears and Music of Love’ unveils the new twin guitar line-up in all its loose and free glory, amps blazing as Deerhoof set out to capture the joyous sounds of a well-oiled band cranking it up in a room, eyeball to eyeball, with no overdubbed choirs or twiddly solos to get in the way of gnarly riffage.

Not that the new fondness for biting guitars means the fuzzy, heart-melting melodies are off the menu, far from it. ‘Chandelier Searchlight’, for example, parades Deerhoof’s unmatched capacity for carving strictly unconventional sweet pop confections, and then dropping them in the middle of multi-layered mini-epics that manage to squeeze something entirely coherent from an endless litany of unexpected U-turns and surprise plot twists.

Add to this the misshapen oddball funk of ‘Snoopy Waves’ (fired up by some of the scruffiest guitar licks around), the Led Zep-hued psych-stomp of ‘Buck and Judy’ and the jazzy dreaminess of ‘Numina’, to name just a few, and you’ve got a towering totem to innovation and exploration. Think of peak-form Flaming Lips stripped of their major label recording budgets – this is very much an album fuelled by first take spontaneity – or Dirty Projectors with some of their excess head swapped for a whole bunch of heart, and you might get an idea of what’s on offer here, even though the only thing Deerhoof can be compared to in any meaningful way remains their own previous output.

Weird but never wacky, friendly but also challenging and abrasive, ‘Offend Maggie’ finds Deerhoof at top form. And there aren’t too many more exciting prospects than that.