Deerhoofing It With The Little Drummer Boy

Sweet Talk

From the brain flow of Paste's Editor At Large:

Some nefarious music hounds from Decatur twisted my outsized ego into creating a dialogue littered with opinionated recommendations and myopic rants. Therefore, to put a smidgen of decency back into nepotism, I have stolen the title "Sweet Talk" in homage of my father who had a weekly sports and leisure column of the same in the early 70's that was syndicated in several small town newspapers in the land the gods made great, New England (sans Connecticut of course). Luckily this space will focus more on sporting leisure, my favorite kind.

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So this morning I heard the new Deerhoof Single “+81” Click and Listen

Which reminded me of a nice night in September when Sweet Talk had the pleasure of catching up with our friends the Flaming Lips in Boston. It’s always a good time when friends come to town and their visit was no exception.

(Wayne and ST after the show, sorry for the blur but this was after a long day of “fun” )

One of the real highlights of the evening was getting to know Greg Saunier the drummer for Deerhoof who served as the opening act. Now having to open for the Lips could be akin to being the Thank You For Not Smoking PSA that has to run before Apocalypse Now, but Deerhoof more than handled the pressure. ST won’t bother scouring our thesaurus for the right string of adjectives and non-sequitirs to accurately capture the sound that erupts out of the trio, but suffice it to say their music is excitingly elusive and not for the faint of heart. Just when you have it cornered, their sound takes a sharp left, busts through a brick wall, turns on it’s jetpack, crashes into an asteroid and bursts into a rainbow. This is especially true of Saunier who was so unhinged while ripping his tiny kit with staccato bursts and jazzy jabs it was almost comical how many drumsticks he snapped PER TUNE.

(Kliph, Wayne of the Lips and Greg of Deerhoof wearing a snazzy day-glo camo deer hunting coat, get it… wink, nudge, wink)

Believe me it takes a lot panache and gusto to have the Lip’s defacto musical genius Steven Drozd sit Indian style on Stage Left for the entire set rocking back and forth in childlike wonder. In fact, there are only three other drummers playing today with same stamina and aplomb, Joe Russo, Dan Auerbach and of course ?uestlove. While each sits on the top of his game when it comes to deftness and originality it is their live play which is a true marvel to behold. Fortunately, Saunier plopped down in the seat next to ST after their set and we had a chance to ask him if it was just a bad batch of sticks or if this was a typical occurrence, he smiled and said “I like them light not just because of the way they feel in my hands, but because I love the music of breaking things.” Indeed.

While not indicative of such musical deconstruction I thought this would be a special and appropriate musical gift from Deerhoof to you. .

Deerhoof’s Christmas Present Wrapped in Song