Deerhoof – Offend Maggie

here is the NFO file from Indietorrents

Original Release / Kill Rock Stars / KRS485

Uploaded by athletic_beetle 1 hour and 52 mins ago

converted from FLAC (from whatcd; I’ve left the .log file from the original FLAC rip in the folder) to V0 using XLD on Mac OS X

01 The Tears Of Music And Love

02 Chandelier Searchlight

03 Buck And Judy

04 Snoopy Waves

05 Offend Maggie

06 Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back

07 Don’t Get Born

08 My Purple Past

09 Family Of Others

10 Fresh Born

11 Eaguru Guru

12 This Is God Speaking

13 Numina O

14 Jagged Fruit

Album info

Their first album with Ed Rodriguez joining Satomi, Greg, and John.

Here’s Deerhoof starting to sound really focused and mature; again i’m biased but this one could be my #1 favorite album of theirs. More ostensibly straight-ahead in terms of instrumentation and idiom but much more complex and robust in terms of arrangement, composition, and as always, sensitive and beautiful production. but yeah, it’s still Deerhoof, make no mistake. it’s still super, super strange.

anyway here’s the Tiny Mix Tapes review (http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/deerhoof-offend-maggie):

Read a review of a Deerhoof record and count the references to childishness, whimsy, and play. That’s not incidental to their appeal. Prog got the shit kicked out of it in the ’70s for being overserious. Deerhoof are a band’s band — they eat complicated music for a snack — but, usually, they sweeten the deal with silly antics. If there’s anything populist about them, it’s that. But Deerhoof must have gotten tired of the characterizations, because Offend Maggie, the band’s ninth album, shows a new seriousness about their aims.

The album is both heavier and more monochrome than 2007’s Friend Opportunity. Here, Deerhoof clothe their twisting prog in slyly-subverted metal gestures. The keyboards are pushed to the back of the mix, and guitar-fray replaces them as the chief textural element (presumably due to the addition of Burmese/Flying Luttenbachers guitarist Ed Rodriguez). On “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back,” fuzz drone turns a Deal-esque pop song into Cream. Another song (“The Tears and Music of Love”) is announced with a dissonant parody of AC/DC. “Buck and Judy” marries typical indie chime to a loping Kyuss bump, and “Numina O” sets out to highlight the vocal by scaling back, but by the end turns into a feedback stomp anyway.

Deerhoof are still, above all, the band at the head of today’s prog revival. Offend Maggie is constructed from the usual tropes: odd time signatures, dissonant tones, “post-rock” ambiance, and lots and lots of arpeggios. They haven’t turned into Wolfmother or anything, but whereas the very incongruity of those metal stabs gave them an ironic spin on past records, here they’re deeply integrated into the songs themselves — and seem somehow more serious.

A few bits here and there float the check they’ve written — as in, actually rock pretty hard. And when the band get together and write something unabashedly difficult (as on “Eaguru Guru” and “Jagged Fruit”), they remind us why they’re at the front of the prog pack: ideas and the finesse to make them swing. That buys room for seriousness, if they want to be. But it isn’t just that Deerhoof sound serious — they often sound tired. Even the best of these songs has a labored quality that dilutes their sense of play, previously one of the band’s strongest suits.

If you’re a fan of pure craft, then Offend Maggie has a lot to offer you. It shows a fascinating group continuing to grow as musicians, and the stylistic choices they make are interesting. But expect a record somewhat more detached than the last: Deerhoof through a glass darkly. It shouldn’t offend, but it might be slow to engage.

credits:

John Dieterich

writer, performer, mixing engineer

Satomi Matsuzaki

writer, performer, mixing engineer

Ed Rodriguez

writer, performer, mixing engineer

Greg Saunier

writer, performer, mixing engineer

Jay Pellicci

recording engineer

Ian Pellicci

recording engineer

Eli Crews

recording engineer

Tomoo Gokita

drawings

Hodaka Hamada

layout