Deerhoof – ‘Noble and Godlike in Ruin’ album review: a Frankensteinian feat of noise and invention
THE SKINNY: “What a glorious creature must he have been in the day of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin”, Captain Robert Walton remarks of Victor Frankenstein in his final letter in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. A similar tale unfurls in Deerhoof’s latest avant-garde assortment.
Frankenstinian composites have been ever-present in popular compositions ever since the dawn of time. All artists are essentially the Frankenstein’s monsters created from the parts of their own heroes, inspirations and interests which so sparked their own creativity into life. Whether it’s intertextuality in literature or homage, pastiche and reference in film or, in music, covering an artist, sampling a song or simply lifting a lyric or melody for your own use, all of our artworks can be woven together to form one wider fabric of human culture.
Within and across each of the album title, its cover artwork and the music captured in the grooves, Deerhoof’s latest release invokes that patchwork spirit of creativity. The band are crashing together myriad styles and sounds to see what happens, experimenting with tones and tinkering with techniques to test the limits of what can be achieved with their creativity, their imagination, their skill and their patience.
Having drawn the title from Shelley’s Frankenstein, it’s only appropriate that the music sounds like the sewing together and shocking with life of so many disparate parts that went before. Noble and Godlike in Ruin sounds like the record you’d get if The Flaming Lips had recorded David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) album with all the instruments and instrumentalists from Tom Waits’ Raindogs sessions. And that should be taken complementarily.
The album is a mechanical opera of nightmares and dreams, of phantasmagoric allegories and atonal symphonies. It’s a mess. It’s a sham. It’s a racket. It’s a riot. It’s chaos captured on tape. It’s confounding and expanding and expounding, and it’s an explosion. It’s an implosion. It’s overwhelming. It’s utterly brilliant and, at times, it’s utterly horrible, too. This might not be an album that you reach for often, it might not be an album that you could sit down with and ease into; you might only ever listen to it once, but it’s one that you’ll remember. It’s one that will capture your attention and arrest your mind and make you wonder what’s going on and what it’s all about and why everyone else isn’t being as creative as this with their own compositing, their own collaging and tapestries.
At one point, front-woman Satomi Matsuzaki sings, “You make machines, I am one!” and that the invocation of the machine and their manufacture only serves to remind you how human the noise this band is making really is. In a time when artificial content is encroaching on our humanity at seemingly every bend in the road, an album like Noble and Godlike in Ruin can serve to remind us how creative the human brain can truly be. You couldn’t prompt a machine to make an album as messy and difficult as this and yet still have it shot through with so much spirit, soul, invention and energy.
For fans of: Gothic literature as noise rock. Songs that can induce panic attacks. The human spirit and its creativity.
A concluding comment from Frankenstein’s monster: “If I ever find a wife of my own, we’ll have our first dance to ‘Kingtoe’.”
Noble and Godlike in Ruin track by track:
Release: April 25th | Label: Joyful Noise | Producers: Ed Rodriguez, Greg Saunier, John Dieterich, Satomi Matsuzaki, Saul Williams
‘Overrated Species Anyhow’: More of a spectral drift of sounds than a song, to listen to ‘Overrated Species Anyhow’ is to be transported into a forest canopy, with a dappled light easing through the greenery and to hear the songs of the birds in the trees, and of the insects below and around you, the ants and bees. “Love to all my animals”, the group chant collectively, “you are why I’m here”. Underneath it all, there’s a percussive threat that all is not what it seems, but the piece recedes back into more calming territory by the end. [4/5]
‘Sparrow Sparrow’: A sucker punch of a song following the calm, soothing introductory number, ‘Sparrow Sparrow’ crashes into confusing life with a vengeance. This is about as disorienting, wrong-footing and difficult to listen to as a song can get whilst still being enjoyable. Matsuzaki’s voice is alternately buried and propped up by a series of jerking, spasmodic guitar stabs and errant percussion, with a constantly shifting rhythm and time signature. [5/5]
‘Kingtoe’: Like a lot of—if not all of—the album, ‘Kingtoe’ feels like there are about ten different songs playing at once, from as many different worlds. Maybe there’s something by Talking Heads in here. Something by Devo. Something by Brian Eno. Something by Can. Something from outer-space. The recurring guitar riff is infectious while the layers of Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocal parts peck and stab at you from all directions. Every now and then, a coherent lyric cuts through, “How can you be so human? I heard you are just an animal.” Then, we fall back into the collage, a compendium of noise and static and grooving energy. That’s no bad thing. [4/5]
‘Return of the Return of the Fire Trick Star’: Have I mentioned that everything on this record is totally disorienting? No? Well, it is. This might be the most intoxicating of the lot, so far. There’s something interesting going on underneath all the weird guitar parts and vocal effects on the album, and that’s that everything is built on top of a really solid rhythm. ‘Kingtoe’ at times has a bit of a 1950’s rock and roll surf beat underneath it and here, on ‘Return of the Return of the Fire Trick Star’, there’s a funk bed that all the weirdness—and it is truly weird—sits on top of and plays off against. [4/5]
‘A Body of Mirrors’: If the slow opening number felt very much of the earth, then this song feels very much out of this world. It makes you feel like you’re looking into a mirror and seeing space and the night sky stars all around you. It makes you feel like you’re floating away into black weightlessness, no gravity to pull you down and keeping you tethered to your earthly bonds. [4/5]
‘Ha, Ha Ha Ha, Haaa’: We’re back on Earth now, but just barely. Once again, this one draws heavily on all those experimental 70s and 80s art-rock groups and pushes the limits of the style to the maximum. Matsuzaki has given up finding the words to go over the chaotic, grating, scratching and echoing noises the rest of her band are making. [3.5/5]
‘Disobedience’: As the opening song utilised a soundscape of birdsong and insect noises, ‘Disobedience’ opens with the sounds of a rippling shoreline coming in and out before a wave of guitars crashes down on us and washes those gentler sounds of respite away. By now, the relentless drive of improvised guitar lines and vocal chants may start to wear you out. This song is certainly the most overwhelming on the album so far, and builds and builds up to tidal-wave proportions, threatening to wipe you out with each incremental passing moment. There is a huge internal battle going on between the ever-building soundscape, supplied by organs, percussion and synths and Matsuzaki repeatedly yelling the word “adrift!” and the rock guitar riff that is trying to keep up with it all. [4.5/5]
‘Who Do You Root For?’: Both continuing to do the same thing as the rest of the album (hitting you over the head with relentless, atonal, discordant and viper-like guitar improvisations, whisper-shout words that are sometimes understandable and mostly indecipherable) and finding new sounds to add to the canvas (there is a little bit of saxophone at the start of this one). [4/5]
‘Under Rats (feat. Saul Williams)’: On every song so far, Satomi Matsuzaki’s voice has been ever present without being overbearing. Her spectral vocal drifts in and out of coherence, and in and out of whatever the drums and guitars or synths and bass happen to be doing at the time. Never covering anything up, blocking it from view, or revealing all that much. It works against the musical backdrop, but here, her voice is joined by something it doesn’t really work with. Another voice. This song is best when it’s just Matsuzaki and the rest of Deerhoof jamming away behind her, rather than when Saul Williams’ too loud, too clear, too audible and too understandable voice takes centre stage and dominates the soundscape. [3/5]
‘Immigrant Songs’: Just when you get to the end of the album and think you might have had enough of all that noise, all those jagged edges and sharp twists and turns, Deerhoof seemingly end on a more palatable piece of music, or rather, pieces plural, than you can find anywhere beyond the first song. The whole album has been a patchwork and a collage, but nothing here is more of a collage than this one. Perhaps these shifting sounds at the end of the record are called ‘Immigrant Songs’ because each vignette from this seven-minute closer didn’t find a home elsewhere in any of the nine other songs, but they contain some of the most uplifting, carefree and enjoyable minutes on the album. [4/5]
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