In a ten-years-after-Kurt Cobain piece entitled ‘When The Edge Moved To The Middle’ published in the New York Times recently, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore made a point of dispelling alt-rock nostalgia by declaring: “You wouldn’t know it now by looking at MTV, with its scorn-metal buffoons and Disney-damaged pop idols, but the underground scene Kurt came from is more creative and exciting than it’s ever been.
One suspects Deer Hoof were foremost in Moore’s mind when he wrote that. Based in the arts lab that is Olympia’s Kill Rock Stars label, this quartet come not only with the Youth vote, but also that of Pavement’s Steve Malkmus and Simpsons creator Matt Groening, a man who knows enough about rock ‘n’ roll to have been awarded guest editorship of the Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003 anthology.
And it’s not hard to see why Groening in particular would dig this. Deer Hoof’s relationship to four square rock n’ roll is like that of Japanese anime to The Lion King. The things they can do with guitars and drums inspire the same response as watching Audrey Horne tie a knot in a cherry stalk with her tongue.
Even the most by-the-numbers tracks on this record ring your doorbell and shout banzai in your face before hightailing it down the road. Art-rock recitals like ‘The Rainbow Silhouette Of The Milky Rain’ go as far out as John Zorn’s quadratic equations on Naked City, while ‘Dog On The Sidewalk’ hypothesises what it’d be like if Yoko Ono signed to the Warp label. Similarly, ‘C’ is halfway between Slint and Shonen Knife.
But All Tomorrow’s Parties invites aside, this is not exclusive music. Sure, the time signatures are tricky and the density of the arrangements would give even Cornelius brain-spasms, but the whole enterprise is imbued with such gaudy crayola-coloured fun, it’s addictive.