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Interruption Is The New Rhythm: A Conversation With Deerhoof
by Alexander Dimitropoulos  photo by Asha Schechter "To answer your question, I would have to say, 'yes,' that the quote that you said that I said, which I sort of remember saying, I very much relate to it." That is one of the few lengthy quotes that came in clearly during my long phone interview with Greg Saunier, drummer of Deerhoof. Every so often, there was an interruption in the conversation. Then whatever Saunier said before the gap came rushing back, careening into the front of the next word or clause, if it didn't do so mid-word or mid-clause. Many Deerhoof songs feature a similar dynamic, rhythm from disjunction. "Skip the waves. Syncopate forwards, backwards" – Deerhoof's "Wrong Time Capsule" Midway through the phoner, something electronic began beeping, and I eventually looked at the digital recorder and saw something I never want to see again: "FULL." I then told the drummer of what Pitchfork Media once called "the best band in the world" that I had to leave him to find another phone. I ended up keeping the same phone, though now I was recording on a digital gizmo with more room, to continue a conversation that, like Deerhoof, I can only safely describe as sounding like one thing: an experiment. Deerhoof's new album,Friend Opportunity, clocks in at 10 tracks, which is 10 shy of their previous album, The Runners Four. The band is also down one member. Guitarist Chris Cohen left Deerhoof to focus full-time on another band, The Curtains. Right now, Deerhoof has Greg Saunier on drums, Satomi Matsuzaki on bass and John Dieterich on guitar, though none of the members are limited to any one instrument. "[John's] making a whole orchestra of... sounds and stuff just with one guitar," Saunier said. "He's been really busy. I think that the lion's share of the burden has fallen on him to cover whatever's missing [because of Cohen's departure]." Like Magic The band members gave themselves the summer to work on Friend Opportunity, a short period of time Saunier said, but interruptions, or rather opportunities, kept popping up. Deerhoof was invited to tour with Radiohead, and while on tour, Thom Yorke and company invited Deerhoof to play some shows with them in Europe. Then, they were invited to tour with The Flaming Lips. Finally, they were asked to help with a soundtrack for a movie by their friend Justin Theroux. "So all of these things were happening... and all of our time that we'd set aside was quickly evaporating," Saunier said. "On the one hand, we were like, 'Oh no!,' tearing our hair out. On the other hand, we're totally jumping for joy because... in a short span of time multiple dreams were just coming true like magic."  New Deerhoof Album: Friend Opportunity Not all of the songs featured on the new album, which includes six double-sided album sheets, are new. "I think actually 'Matchbox Seeks Maniac' I've been working on... or I've had ideas for that song floating around trying to formulate it into a finished song for, I don't know, maybe since before Deerhoof started maybe, like maybe, I don't know, 13 years or something like that," Saunier said. "I've been working on this song for 13 years!" Saunier said that recorded and live versions of songs are "both just kind of weird versions of the ideal version." He later added, "that real ideal version never really exists in the real world, you know, it's just sort of a fantasy or something." He said that a live song or a recorded song is just a "cover version of that ideal version." The band's label, Kill Rock Stars, formerly home to The Decemberists and the now-defunct Sleater-Kinney, gives Deerhoof a lot of artistic freedom. "I remember so many times over the years just begging them for some kind of feedback or some kind of guidance, you know... 'what should we do?,' you know, 'what kind of album would be good to do next?' or... 'what do you think of the rough mixes we just sent you?,'" Saunier said. "They're always just like, 'Yup, good.'" The Road I spoke with Saunier on January 24, 2007, the first U.S. date on the current Deerhoof tour, when the band had just returned from a three-performance stint in Japan with OOIOO. "When you're traveling and playing with a band... [and] you really like their music, it just makes the trip so fun," Saunier said. While in Japan, Deerhoof managed to see the hip-hop group The Roots perform in a tiny venue. "Everybody in the room was close to the stage 'cause it was such a small room," Saunier said. "In a way they were less obviously powerful... but, in another way, it was kind of more powerful... just because you could hear so many details," he later added. Saunier expressed a great admiration for ?uestlove (pronounced Questlove), the drummer and most immediately identifiable member of the group because of his giant afro. "Even according to him, his claim to fame is that he plays like a machine," Saunier said. "He doesn't play like a machine at all. And when you see him up close and you can hear all the nuances of what he's doing, there's so much interaction between him and Frankie Knuckles, the percussionist, and just the whole band, really." Deerhoof visited The Roots backstage after they had performed two shows in one night, on ?uestlove's birthday no less, and Saunier said he was amazed by what they were doing after the show. "I walk in, Frankie Knuckles is sitting there with his laptop, ?uestlove is sitting next to him with his laptop, and ?uestlove is, like, burning him a CD, 'so have you heard this?' I mean... this is like maybe four minutes after the show was over." Deerhoof gave ?uestlove a "traditional Japanese hair accessory" for his birthday, "but it kind of disappeared," Saunier said. "It became invisible the second he put it inside his hairdo." Direction Deerhoof's songs feature abrupt and radical changes in tempo, but Saunier, though he is the drummer, says he doesn't dictate the direction of the music. He said that the band does not have a "leader" or a "decision-maker." "I was always fascinated by the James Brown thing where it was literally, you know, he was hiding cues inside his lyrics and inside his dance moves, that they were actually meant, you know, to tell the band what to do, and when to change, and what to change," Saunier said. "We've never actually been that conscious about it where we've worked out a conscious set of cues or codes to know what to do." The multitude of sounds and rhythms that Deerhoof employs are not the only reasons that pigeonholing them into one genre is difficult. "Because any popularity that Deerhoof has ever gotten has come so gradually... we've just never had that situation to deal with where you're associated with one sound, one style, one song that you have to repeat," Saunier said. What, then, can the audience expect to see at the show? "There's no formula to all this, there's no pattern to follow," Saunier said. "We're totally in no-man's land here. And that's just incredibly fun." Earlier, he said, "We have absolutely no idea what we're doing, and we never have." Athens Saunier enjoyed playing at Popfest 2006 because there was a large turnout and he felt that the audience was listening. "You can sometimes feel the attention being paid," Saunier said. "It's just such an honor to be paid that amount of attention. And when you feel that you're being listened to, it just puts joy in your soul. It makes you want to play the best that you can." Deerhoof did have, however, "some concern about the hotel" because all of it, from the carpet to the hallway, was decorated in Bulldog paraphernalia. "We felt very conscious of our outsider status, let's put it that way," Saunier said. "Onstage we felt very welcome and happy." Deerhoof will perform at Athens' 40 Watt on February 21 with Busdriver and Harlem Shakes. Tickets for the show are now available at Schoolkids Records. Comments [post a comment]Comments are closed |
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Saturday, February 04, 2012
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