DEERHOOF//
FRIEND OPPORTUNITY//
KILL ROCK STARS//
WORDS: ALEXANDER HENDERSON//

First, I just want to say how weird it is that Greg Saunier and Satomi Matsuzaki are married. They make a charismatic pair, but they don't match. The diminutive Satomi looks like a dignified, hyperactive wind-up-toy on stage, a toy that can do high kicks and rock 'n' roll poses. I've seriously never seen anything so cute, which is why it seems incongruous that she would marry the gangly, earnest Saunier. Sure, he's got a goofy grin. But when he squats down behind his drum "set" (sometimes just a single drum), he looks like a bent-kneed spider beating the shit out of its captive victim. And just like a predator consuming prey, his life depends on it. Luckily, there's no need to reconcile the band's opposing, almost conflicting elements. If Deerhoof are known for anything, it's the wedding of the savage to the saccharine, and they've been doing it masterfully for over a decade. So what of Friend Opportunity? Where does it fall on the spectrum between hostile and hospitable? As usual, everywhere and nowhere.

The first thing you notice is how pretty this album can be. "Choco Fight" fades in and out of baby-blanket lullaby with rolling keyboards and pre-school melodies. The segue into "Whither the Invisible," probably the least Deerhoof-like song Deerhoof has ever released, is beautiful and somehow peaceful. Soft, unintrusive piano chords and reverbed organ float around Satomi's by-now-familiarly childlike voice, except that now there's no backdrop of grown-up irony to juxtapose against. It's so soothing you don't even notice it when she sings "It's a drug, it's a vicious drug." This is the music porcelain dolls hear in their dreams after a good day.

These subdued moments are quickly contradicted, though don't worry, this isn't Deerhoof's "calm" album. Witness the keyboards in "The Perfect Me", which would be creepy as hell if they weren't so catchy. Observe the first frantic six seconds of anxious guitar destruction on "Cast Off Crown". The album is permeated with moments that throw you off for a second, before sinking their teeth back into you and pulling you deeper. None of it ever gets to that level of rawk last heard on "Scream Team" or "Milk Man", though. So, it's not just that Deerhoof is getting poppier and poppier, right? Their energy seems to more cohesively focused, which is where this album differs most from 2005's The Runners Four. Each song here feels rounder, thicker, more elaborate, like a carefully aimed bullet, as opposed to the joyful scattershot that was "Reveille" or the laundry list of good ideas that was "The Runners Four". What Friend Opportunity lacks in noisy spontaneity or hectic excitement, it makes up for with carefully executed whimsical choruses and mathematical happiness.

Except, wait-- the entire last third of the album is dedicated to the 12-minute closer "Look Away". What happened to all that messily precise off-kilter pop? I like my songs at no longer than three minutes, three-and-a-half tops, you say. What you've got is nearly a quarter-hour of lethargic, sprawling guitar & effects noodling that congeals only once in awhile into some semblance of a song. It doesn't match the rest of the record, it doesn't match the last four years of Deerhoof's career, and it doesn't match what most listeners were probably expecting at this point in the album. And if it did, I wouldn't want it to. Just like watching tiny Satomi dance on stage next to her hyper-focused husband, half of the fun is just watching how they make it work. Because somehow, they always do.