Deerhoof is new to me, even though they’ve been around for nearly a decade, so I’m not really the best person to give you a career retrospective—especially since the San Francisco band’s been through more cast changes than Cats. (hiss.) All I can really tell you is that they bear a superficial resemblance to Enon, in that both are fronted by Asian women with cutesy high voices and tend to trade in fractured, offbeat and often loud indie pop. I’m also not the best person to give you an idea of what to expect from “The Perfect Me,” the lead-off track from Friend Opportunity, because Heather Phares at the All Music Guide already sums it up perfectly: “‘The Perfect Me’ kicks off the album with galloping percussion and organs that sound like rays of sun bursting through clouds, two of Friend Opportunity’s main musical motifs.”

Well, not quite perfectly: turns out galloping percussion isn’t exactly a major musical motif of the rest of the album, nor are the hits-of-sunshine organs. This is a bloody shame, because “The Perfect Me” is a fantastically wild and heady ride that the rest of Friend Opportunity only occasionally matches in pace. I’ve read that previous Deerhoof efforts were, shall we say, less restrained; hopefully that means “The Perfect Me” isn’t a one-time fluke. Not that the rest of Friend Opportunity is bad, but one listen and I think you’ll agree that “The Perfect Me” is a rollercoaster trip that ends too soon.