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Deerhoof - The Runners Four

The Runners Four

Deerhoof

ATP Recordings

2005

Deerhoof are one of those bands that are hard to place, you can't nail them down, the buggers. Wildy inventive, low-fi, noisy, experimental, indie, pop - all these things and more apply to this San Francisco-based quartet, who's new album, The Runners Four, demonstrates their ability to remain shapeless and amorphic without being self-indulgent or pointless.

It's easy to draw comparisons to the likes of Sonic Youth or Blonde Redhead, but to be honest, Deerhoof are in another league altogether. Whereas Sonic Youth have ceased to be as groundbreaking as they once were, and Blonde Redhead are resolutely melancholic and poppy, Deerhoof defy genres and labels. At once experiemental and mainstream, pop and punk, often in the same song, they don't see the walls or barriers that other bands and scenes have spent decades erecting.

Each one of The Runners Four's 20 tracks is a triumph of this particular style of songwriting - almost a blissful ignorance of stylistic straightjackets and gags. To talk of how great it sounds, how well the guitar work is, how well Satomi sings in her delightfully kookie way, is to miss the point of listening to a Deerhoof album.

You really have heard nothing like this before.

Review by Kenny Mooney
Deerhoof Website