Deerhoof Takes Notes...

After a year of nonstop touring, Deerhoof returned home as quite the audience. For drummer Greg Saunier, bassist Satomi Matsuzaki and guitarist John Dieterich, watching the bands they opened for—Radiohead, The Fiery Furnaces and The Flaming Lips (“[Wayne Coyne] wants the full weird in this world,” says Matsuzaki)—gave them something to aspire to when they began working on the follow-up to their lauded 2005 LP, The Runners Four. “There was no way we could escape the idea that music can be at this incredibly high standard and can be this incredibly beautiful,” says Saunier, from the San Francisco apartment he shares with Matsuzaki. “There’s no way we could ignore that.”

New album Friend Opportunity finds Deerhoof reaching for the same visceral connections it saw between its tourmates and their audiences—but without compromising the band’s love of experimentation and jumpy prog-pop arrangements. The album is also the first since the departure of guitarist Chris Cohen, which forced Deerhoof to reconfigure—Matsuzaki returned to guitar, and the band brought in samplers and drum machines it hadn’t used in years. On songs like “Believe E.S.P.,” a funky guitar hook gives way to a final minute of squiggly, analog keyboard notes, before Matsuzaki ends with pretty, girlish “la-la’s.”

Though “playing audience” helped them see their own work from a new perspective, the perspective did have its limits. So Deerhoof took a break from touring to visit a North Haven, Maine, elementary school where the students performed an interpretive dance version of the group’s album, Milk Man. The band members—who also put on a workshop for the kids—were impressed by the children’s creativity and curiosity. “They would ask these questions that would seem to be more sophisticated than even the line of questions from professional music journalists,” Saunier says. “‘Do you need the pedals? Could you play the concert without your pedals?’ That was a really good one,” he says, laughing. Matsuzaki agrees: “That made me rethink music!”