Deerhoof could have been massive; if they’d have wanted to I’m certain they could have been a top ten juggernaut, spewing out hit after hit of giddy J- pop like the bastard cousins of McFly. But of course, they’re not, they have eschewed a potentially lucrative future to splice their pop nuggets with chaotic dissonance and nonsensical ramblings. Journeying through their earlier albums you will be confronted for mere seconds by a sweet and captivating ditty, before being thrown into a scatological whirlwind of atonal whimsy. While they have softened with age, theirs is a sound that has self-consciously remained the preserve of the few. In short, listening to Deerhoof can sometimes be a challenge, but it makes the pay off of discovering those acquiescences to accessibility all the more sweet. They deserve to be in this list by sheer dint of always providing startlingly original moments throughout this decade; they have been unfailingly ready to baffle and charm in equal measure.
The song I’ve chosen to demonstrate the group’s almost schizophrenic personality can be found midway through the band’s 2005 album, The Runners Four, and in some ways equips itself well to sit alongside some of the more chart-friendly tracks on this list. It will never be deemed the most immediate of songs, nor will it be the most cherished, but I am willing to stake my reputation on the fact that, of these 50 tunes of the decade, it has the hook that is most likely to lodge itself in your head and burrow like some sort of benevolent rodent into your brain.
Having said all that, it might seem slightly counterintuitive to pick a track for ‘TOTD’ that ends with a minute and a half of what could be classed as a rare foray into the oft-ignored sub-genre of ambient dial tone. But such is the genius of the preceding two and half minutes that the song simply cannot be omitted over the trifling matter of a third of it offering a total lack of musical substance.
It starts with a ghostly rattle of Greg Saunier’s cymbal, as a fanfare of a guitar line hastens us on a quick jaunt through the thoroughly inscrutable psyche of Satomi, who once again starts to mew cryptic offerings in her ineffable Japanese lilt:
Bless spirit ditties of no tone.
Inspirations.
Unsensations.
Modulate more silence
Anyone else? No, I thought not. It’s sort of beside the point though; her impenetrable chatter moulds itself to the craftily picked lead guitars which sway in and out of each other, driven by Saunier’s lolloping beat. It is Deerhoof at their most coherent, their most endearing. And then, the coup de gras: a chiming riff announces itself from nowhere and practically throttles you. The bass stabs as the trebly, almost synthy sound of John Dietrich’s guitar sings an arching, spiky ditty that forcibly ingrains itself on your frontal lobe. Just as you get your head around the bare faced pop sensibility on display, the riff vanishes, and we are transported back to the undulating verse and more befuddling tales of ‘montage fragments’ and those eponymous ‘spirit ditties’. We are treated to this ecstatic cycle just once more and then we descend into what one imagines the latter stages of tinnitus to be like, left to brood on a lesson in how to write the perfect pop hook. It’s almost as though you need that minute and a half just to get your breath back.
ST
