DEERHOOF, I now realise, are a five-album band of long vintage and steady, heroic development. How could I not have known this?
Never mind. Within seconds of starting, their freshness, brilliance and emotional charm knocked me into the same adoration that gripped the whole crowd at last week's show. I hope there is a reader somewhere who doesn’t already know all this. Please look out for your next chance to see them, and to buy their recordings. Your life should take a turn for the better.
Tunes tonight were drawn in the main from the last two albums, "Milk Man " from 2004 and this year's "Friend Opportunity". The live show is, like the recordings, a meticulous combination of the naïve subconscious and a restless, inventive energy.
Satomi Matsuzaki enchants us with her precise, minimalist vocals, warm bass and childlike, open-faced choreography. John Dieterich is out on planet Great Guitar Stuff and Greg Saunier commands proceedings from extreme stage left on the neurotic jazz drumkit. The astonishing gaps between what they offer are central to the DEERHOOF experience. It's as if the rule is "if it seems to fit, don't use it". "Kidz Are So Small" has the simple mind of a three year old and the flailingly impossible guitar solo of a demented bucket of wire nails. Every song has this capacity to surprise, and delight.
And whenever we fell confused or startled, we have Satomi Matsuzaki's serious face, tiny stature and serious, composed demeanour. Even when she abandons the stillness to race back and forth, jerk her head from side to side or encourage us to clap with the economy of a zen master leading prayers at the shrine she holds all this surrealism together for us as if it were the simplest thing in creation.
But of course, it isn't. It isn’t simple at all. At one level it's a sexually charged tussle between id and ego - the martial quality of hyper rational drum measures and the emotionally vulnerable girl-voice brought dangerously together, observed in disbelief by John Dieterich's furious guitar tirades. As a sound and spectacle it burrows itself rapidly down to the deepest and least understood fragments of personality. So I guess there will be people out there who resist the temptation. Easy background music it is not. Sheer delight.
FIELD MUSIC made an improbable support band. Dry to the point of aridity tonight, FIELD MUSIC are pure, sharp focused technic-music. Vocals, Guitar and keyboards and drums, yes. But highly composed, highly disciplined and emotionally neutral. They have attracted some of their devoted followers to the evening, and there are flickers of half-private references to their current status as "not a band", working out their contractual requirements. Where tonight's other bands all have exceptional, charismatic drummers in the driving seat, Peter Brewis (onetime drummer with Futureheads) and brother David swap duties and keep the drumming to little more than accenting things with a precise snare. There is a lot or rationing, measuring and careful sequencing going on, almost Baroque in its delicate precision.
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In another atmosphere, another night I would have to reappraise them, no question. The word is that I won’t get the chance, though. But I do have the radar set to pick up a next incarnation.
FIELD MUSIC had been preceded by the altogether more organic approach of QUACK QUACK, whose growing celebrity is causing no end of bemused pleasure to the Leeds music scene in general. The near legendary Neil Turpin (of Bilge Pump, and many others) has fused his technical genius with the spontaneous glee and krautrock enthusiasms of Stu and Moz (formerly sound crew on 92% of the best alternative Leeds gigs over the last n years). The result is a remarkably happy instrumental trio with excited danceabilty and shovelfuls of music to listen to. Moz continues to develop his unhinged stage presence with near-falling off the stage and the recruitment of an audience member to hold down a chord on a keyboard while he jumps across to his auxiliary drum kit (as if Neil couldn’t cope!). Stu's funky bass lines have got a lot of muscle. The tunes are growing in number and strength. On the strength of tonight's set there should be a very nice Run of the Mill album sometime soon.
US visitors KIT were chaotically demob happy openers. This was the last night of their UK tour and they were set on enjoying themselves. From squeaky singer hyperventilation at the beginning to the guitarist's inventive deconstruction of his instrument at the end, KIT were great fun. A recorder, demented guitar and drums, and a sack full of enthusiasm for noise and furiosity. My souvenir for the evenng was a copy of their crackling CD album "Broken Voyage"
www.myspace.com/deerhoof
www.myspace.com/fieldmusic
www.myspace.com/thisisquackquack
www.myspace.com/vvkitvv
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