Deerhoof - Offend Maggie

Genre indie-rock Publisher Kill Rock Stars

I should preface this review with the fact that I wasn’t familiar with Deerhoof’s music before listening to their new album entitled Offend Maggie.  So, I’m not a long-lived fan who owns all of this band’s music and even the bootlegs.  I don’t follow them on every summer tour, and I certainly don’t wait in long lines in the freezing cold for Tower Records to open on a Monday night at midnight to retrieve the new copy of their latest disc.  So, I don’t have a bias towards one album over another.  And, I cannot and will not be swayed by the latest trends in indie rock or experimental rock.  With that being said…

I turned on Offend Maggie and was pleasantly surprised.  The guitar kicked in and I was thinking, “Great!  Sounds like White Stripes… Razorlight… The Raconteurs.”  (I actually thought “Neat!  Sounds like…” but I thought the word ‘neat’ would make me lose credit as a rock journalist – too late)  I liked it.  I was grooving or bobbing my head or whatever a nerdy, overweight music fan does when a good guitar riff comes on.  I couldn’t be happier.  Was this a new band that I hadn’t heard of let alone listened really good?  Would this music find a permanent place in my collection?  Would some of these songs join my iTunes playlist that I listen to while surfing the net?  Or, the playlist I listen to while doing my morning calisthenics (just jumping jacks and burpies - nothing serious)?  I really thought I’d found something special.  Then…

Mickey Mouse started singing.  Okay.  It wasn’t really Mickey Mouse.  It was a fourteen year-old Japanese girl that’s seen one too many horror movies.  Okay.  It wasn’t really a fourteen year-old Japanese girl (Wikipedia tells me it’s actually a Japanese woman).  Here’s what it really is: a bad acid flashback.  And, it’s so unfortunate because the music is really good.  The voice is nails on a chalkboard.

This music, this indie/arty/experimental music, is sometimes referred to as noise rock, and I couldn’t agree more.  Most of the album is just noise - background music in a Quentin Tarantino rip-off B-movie with no plot, bad dialogue and even worse acting.  As an avid NBA fan, I did like the song “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back” in which the lyrics teach you the fundamentals of basketball – “dribble… speed, speed… rebound… shoot!”  But, the excitement of familiarity faded quickly when I was thrust back into the cruel torture of the rest of the songs on the CD.

I recommend this album to indie rock fans everywhere.  However, for the rest of us that like our rock to make sense (the exception is the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense), Deerhoof is not our cup of tea.  Tea?  No way.  It makes me want to drink a fifth of bourbon.