“Due to overwhelming response to our recent live stream, we are now making it available as the album ‘Devil Kids’, with video download of the entire show. Only available via Bandcamp and Joyful Noise as a download or limited edition(one-time pressing of 1000 copies on TV Glow Blue Vinyl).”

Well no one was expecting that today, out of the blue at ther end of December (TV glow blue dare we say?) a new Deerhoof live album  crammed packed with favourites from their now rather extensive catalogue, including  Come See the Duck – how can anyone not love that song? There’s always a delight with San  Francisco’s Deerhoof, a brightness that you can’t help but go with. Recorded live like this they sound a little harsher, not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, just a different thing. It takes a moment or two to adjust to  that harsher live sound and let those revolving rhythms of theirs take you  with their joy – Deerhoof are always always |(always) a joy. They have you as soon as The perfect Me kicks in. In all honesty, as is often the case with a live album, you probably need to be familiar with these songs, if not you’re maybe better off starting with the recent studio album Actually, You Can and then easing yourself in to everything else, there again there is an energy to these recordings, Plant Thief is particularly fluid, maybe this is the place to start? Hey look, twenty live track from the recent live stream.  

Due to overwhelming response to Deerhoof’s December 2021 live stream, we are now making it available as the album Devil Kids, with video download of the entire show.  Purchase of the limited-edition 12-song LP (on TV Glow Blue vinyl) or digital version of Devil Kids includes six digital bonus tracks and a video download of the concert (stream / download links attached as a bonus item), interspersed with behind-the-scenes footage of Satomi, John, Ed and Greg reuniting, relearning their songs, and cooking noodles.

This concert itself was recorded with four cameras, the audio mixed by Greg Saunier in stunning high fidelity, in November, after two years of not playing or even seeing each other. The setting was the comically cramped basement of guitarist Ed Rodriguez. The setlist was 18 songs spanning their history, including many songs never before performed, such as those from the recent albums they recorded in isolation from each other. The sheer joy of their reunion is palpable in every note of the music and every giggle between songs.

“When my friends asked if playing with band again was like riding a bike, I had to say no. We changed over two years. We played looser and got along nicer,” says drummer Greg.

Deerhoof have never really struck me as bike-riding music, maybe if the wheels were made by Buckminster Fuller, but then wheels made by Buckminster Fuller make for a far more interesting ride, Giga Dance is certainly geodesic. Greg says looser, never too loose though, for a band who haven’t been playing together for a couple of years they’re sounding rather tight, rather tuned in – the angles are right, it is impossible not to dance, hey look, Deefhoof, how could you not like it? The whole thing is there to be explore on their Bandcamp page… and that live version of Duck and the run up they take to it is jsut brilliant, come, come see….