Kill rock-star envy

Selling out can be accomplished in a lot of ways. Sonic Youth toned down their feedback-rich jam sessions and signed to Geffen. Beck did thinly veiled Prince impersonations, also for Geffen. The Butthole Surfers went from making noise rock discordant enough to cause seizures to making pop songs saccharine-sweet enough to cause cavities—and, worse, signed to a Disney subsidiary.

Now, meet Deerhoof. In 1996, Satomi Matsuzaki, a Japanese college student studying in the United States, tried out for a band in need of a singer. Matsuzaki, who was coming from zero musical experience, was given, in place of a mike, a papier-m/O-o-Ohmch/O-o-Ohm sculpture shaped like an animal leg.

The audition went well.

Ten years later, the fiercely independent San Francisco trio—Matsuzaki (bass and vocals), John Dieterich (guitar) and Greg Saunier (drums)—can claim co-bills with such varied and acclaimed acts as The Roots, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips and Sonic Youth, playing illustrious rock festivals like All Tomorrow’s Parties. But unlike other indie bands to creep out of the weird-music underground and into the limelight, they did it without impersonating Prince, without compromising their sound, and, just as notably, without the help of a major label.

Most bands reject categorization. But with Deerhoof—who just released their 10th LP on Kill Rock Stars/5RC—the self-proclaimed ambiguity is actually valid. Rolling Stone attempted to describe their sound as “magical art-rock”—but even that tag won’t work all the time.

“All of our recent songs are different from each other,” Saunier explains. “And all of our old songs are different from each other. Only when we string them all together in a live performance does it all sound like it’s part of the same concept.

“When we first make up the songs,” he goes on, “each one sounds like, ‘What? What kind of song is this?’”

The new album, Friend Opportunity, is a chunk of classic Deerhoof, swinging song to song from driven, straightforward rock riffs into ambient, synth-laden interludes. There are also horn intros, samples reminiscent of

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80s video games and rocking chairs (respectively), and, floating along beside all of this, Matsuzaki’s thin, childlike vocals treating us to ultra-cute lyrics about sailors and animals.

All this sonic debris suggests a group both poppy and noisy—but Deerhoof couldn’t be labeled either pop or noise music. 

“Pop, to me, isn’t really a sound,” Saunier insists. “It isn’t really a style, it’s a genre based on how the music [is] used. If it’s music that gets young people excited, then that’s pop music—but it could be Tony Bennett, or it could be in the style of hip-hop or the style of heavy metal.

“The most exciting pop music,” he believes, “is stuff that’s creating new styles—and there’s stuff like that coming out every day. I’ve always, from the beginning, felt like what we do is pop music.”

Noise music, he explains, “is that genre that started in Japan, which is deliberately anti-music. I was always into [Noise], but when someone says something is noisy, they probably aren’t describing a style. My dad always described ‘noise’ as ‘sound out of place’—[something that] doesn’t fit in with [someone’s] idea of what sound should be happening now.”

What comes out of Deerhoof, however, is exactly what should be happening now—at least according to their gradually growing legion of fans, including Simpsons creator Matt Groening and Beck.

“We’ve been lucky about how slowly [it’s] happened,” Saunier says. “And that might sound strange—why wouldn’t you want to be an overnight superstar?

“To me,” he muses, “overnight superstars have one hit song, or one hit album, one hit sound. … Every time they go to record something new, everyone is telling them, ‘Well, make it sound consistent.’ For us, it’s been so slow that we never have been associated with any one sound or any one musical style. When we’re going to make a new album, people will tell us, ‘Surprise me.’ They’ll grant us this kind of poetic license that is like an incredible privilege.”

And Deerhoof would like to keep it that way. Its members don’t care to jump to the next plateau, signing to a major label like so many of their once-underground peers.

“When you look at Sleater-Kinney or Elliott Smith, it didn’t change their music, income or happiness as a band. Elliott Smith obviously wasn’t happier on a major than on an indie. So I don’t know what the reason to do it would be … except maybe to give Kill Rock Stars a break. We try their patience a bit.”

[Freelance writer/cartoonist Ethan Clark is based in Asheville.]