Deerhoof. I bought their ‘Holdypaws’ album a few years back. Spun it a couple of times and resigned it the played-once-in-a-blue-moon pile. Disco-y, dissonant, arty punk that often fails to trigger my interest. Bearing this in mind, it’s a wonderful shock that their side of this record is such a revelation. Starts with robots wishing me a happy birthday, before making a noise that must surely be designed to blow speakers and fracture eardrums within a mile-radius. A fucked up sheet of chaos that sounds like a congregation of electrical appliances embarking on some hideous whirring orgy. Suddenly the frenzy breaks off, stumbling into a loosely-played and very out-of-tune acoustic guitar part with cutesy pie girly vocals, before jumping headlong back into that godawful noise again. An absolute treat.
Gasp. Their last. Starts with some ass-backward doo wop before pulling in multiple directions at once and shivering off two ambient, nape-tingling instrumental pieces that made their records such a jaw-dropping listen. Awesome in their own right, but being a primitive beast I have to admit to being disappointed at not getting even a smattering of their frenzied grind attack as part of the deal. Hardly a feeling of being duped like discovering the ‘mermaid’ you saw at the carnival was just a monkey and a fish stitched together, just a vague feeling that things have been left incomplete. No matter. Their side of the record is a delicious listen regardless, making for an all-round essential purchase.