Open Ears, Insert Deerhoof

Bay Area indie veterans destroy/reinvent themselves again, to charming effect

Comments (0) By Mikael Wood Wednesday, Jan 17 2007

Sometimes that takes a while. “One song on the new record, ‘Matchbook Seeks Maniac,’ I think probably I’ve been working on that song for maybe 13 years,” Saunier laughs. “The chorus of that song is actually on an early Deerhoof LP — it’s a little bit hard to find — called Dirt Pirate Creed. That melody appears on there in a couple different places. And over the years, I’ve just been trying to find a place to fit it in.”

All this hard work has primed Deerhoof for a breakthrough beyond the opening-band, college-radio realm. Recently, the band held down the splashy featured-artist spot on MySpace, prompting an avalanche of new friend requests — which, as any struggling band might tell you, can mean everything or nothing. As Saunier notes, “It’s amazing the amount of mail you’re getting that’s actually hate mail. People who actually hate your band. They’re looking for some good music on MySpace and trust MySpace to choose something nice for them, then they end up with Deerhoof and they think it’s just the worst thing they’ve ever heard. If anybody wants to look at our MySpace comments, you’ll just see the barrage of four-letter words and insults and utter hatred.”