Deerhoof - Breakup Song (Vinyl LP, CD, 7" vinyl)

The first thing you notice about the mighty Deerhoof’s latest long-player is the drum sound. A booming, thunderous, disjointed skronk big beat shithouse that propels us through the majority of the album, where the now-legendary quartet romp through 11 frantic and utterly unique tracks of their skewed rock-pop weirdness. There’s times like ‘Bad Kids To The Front’ where the machines seem to take over entirely, spewing out layers of clattering cacophony, and elsewhere the “classic” Deerhoof formula is squeezed into these heavily produced beats for tracks like the slightly Enon-esque ‘Zero Seconds Pause’.

The heavily produced hyperpop aesthetic on this album is somewhat daunting at first, but the robotic sheen doesn’t distance the listener from the immediacy and humanity of the music which these wonderful minds create, and there’s a queasy, wonky Battles-esque hypno weirdness paired with brassy Cuban grooves and Blonde Redhead-esque soothing melodies for an album of breakneck dream-dance party rock which is over before you’ve had a chance to properly process the brilliance contained within.

Immediate standouts after a handful of listens are ‘To Fly Or Not To Fly’, with its cavernously gigantic-sounding intro and pant-fillingly terrifying guitar attack paired with disconcertingly sweet and seemingly disconnected verses, and heartbreaking closer ‘Fete D’Adieu’ with its lilting Blonde Redhead shuffle, chiming guitars and soul-meltingly beautiful, slightly Breeders-esque melodies closing on an arresting refrain of “a muscle in the heart” before coming to a dead stop, leaving you bewildered, excited and ready to go again. I love this. It makes me feel like I’m a real person and not just a metal box. It’s coming home with me. I swear Deerhoof just keep getting more perfect.