Deerhoof –  Actually You Can – (Joyful Noise) – There is new Deerhoof, a new Deerhoof day is a good day, there is always hope when there’s a new Deerhoof album, even on a cold windy October day like today.

“Think of all the beauty, positivity and love that gets deemed ugly, negative and hateful by the self-proclaimed guardians of ‘common sense.’ We’d hardly be destroying society by dismantling their colonial economics and prisons and gender roles and aesthetics. We’d be creating it!”

Deerhoof have such an uplifting way of doing their rather unique musical thing, there is a delightful bite to their way, they deliver it with a smile rather than a punch, it does punch though, don’t be fooled. And they can be delicately beautiful, We Grew, And We Were We Astonished is just that, bite with a smile that goes on for a mile, a delight.  The vital San Francisco band have been “Keepin it boxy and harsh since 1994” and really, although you would expect most to slow down of fade a little at the edges,  they haven’t let us down once. Ancient Mysteries, Described sounds like The Go Team dancing with Voivod at some kind of crazed street carnival, they’ve never been a band to just repeat it all, they do always sound very very Deerhoof, even when they’re singing a slow motion love song, they are always Deerhoof. And now the sun is coming out, of course it is, the weather gods are enjoying this first listen as much as the rest of us here.  There are always clever details, they’re natural though, instinctive, not a band who need to show off  or tell us how musically clever they are, they just do it, we just know it – listen to that bit in Plant Thief (great title by the way), it is, as they say on the label, a joyful noise, Our Philosophy Is Fiction sounds like insect hooves and lots of them.

Experimental pop for people who don’t really like to admit they like pop music, Deerhoof are a delight, they always have been, I don’t know where this new album stands in terms of their catalogue and does it really matter? They’re sounding as good as ever, as challenging as ever and delightful as ever, as unique as ever and  Divine Comedy is about as good as they ever get, a perfect closing track. Look how sunny it is out there now here in East London, that’s what Deerhoof do, you don’t need our works though, the music is all there, cut to the chase.  You can breather now (underwater), think of all the beauty, positivity and love that gets deemed ugly, negative and hateful by the self-proclaimed guardians of ‘common sense. There goes a bit that sounds like Cardiacs, we had to say that, we can only say that with the very best of bands and Deerhoof are one of the very best  – “Over eighteen boundless albums as experimental as they are pop, Deerhoof has continuously quested for daring storytelling and radical sounds, creating a new shared language of revolution”, we could’nt have said it better, Deerhoof remain one of the special ones and this as special as anything they’ve done, Hooray! (sw)     

The album is out this week, more via Bandcamp where yoy can now hear the whole album, or via the band’s own website or indeed the label Joyful Noise

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“Be Unbarred, O Ye Gates of Hell” by Deerhoof off the album ‘Actually, You Can’ out on Joyful Noise Recordings.