[review 2007: honourable mentions]

Sometimes you’ll read the reviews for an album and wonder if maybe you should’ve gotten that PhD in media studies or comparative literature, because the level of discourse seems to be several fathoms over your head. Friend Opportunity is one of those albums where every review makes you feel like a dolt. Forward-thinking? “They’re ‘deconstructing pop,’ which means they’re asking questions,” says Pitchfork of the album’s final track. “Part of what’s been endearing about this less caustic phase of the band is the loosely conceptual feel of their records,” says Tiny Mix Tapes. And then there’s the late, lamented Stylus with a reviewer who’s obviously thought very, very hard about what Deerhoof is: “There’s a self-involvement to their songs, a refusal to communicate beyond itself, that drives detractors to call the band ‘nihilistic.’”

Clearly Deerhoof are up to something far more interesting than just putting together fractured and frenetic pop albums, but if you’ve come to me to make heads or tails of Deerhoof’s grand vision you’re asking the wrong person. I barely pay attention to the lyrics; I can’t tell you if there’s a grand narrative weaving through the album, or if “The Perfect Me” is “trying really hard to be a pop song,” as the Stylus review indicates. I can’t place Deerhoof into the constellation of indie prog or avant-garde pop bands, or really any context at all. All I have is this album and this infernal brain of mine, ill-suited to drawing such complex connections.

If you’re looking for the Fisher-Price “shiny glowy things are shiny” review, though, welcome! Have a seat and let me tell you about Friend Opportunity, which on the scale of “not shiny” to “very shiny,” is a definite “wow that’s really shiny.” When I bought the album, I was basically hoping for an album full of the elements that made first track “The Perfect Me” such a killer song: namely the sound of 10,000 galloping out-of-control racehorses led by an evil organist mastermind with a giant purple cape and a twirly moustache. Packed with vitamins and explosions, “The Perfect Me” is one of the best pop songs of the year almost by sheer force of will—it packs more exciting twists, turns and switchbacks into three minutes than entire albums did this year.

Deerhoof can’t sustain the energy across the entire album, but the same otherworldly atmosphere and fragmented songwriting remains over the next eight tracks. “+81″ and “Believe E.S.P.” are the most conventional songs on the album, though there’s plenty of amusing meanders and tangents to follow even so. It’s also on the first couple of tracks that helium angel slash vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki’s unique singing style bears the most fruit, serving as counterpoint to the muscular and frenetic instrumental work—especially the insistent drum work of Greg Saunier. Whether Matsuzaki has the presence to carry “Whiter the Invisible Birds?”, though, I’m still not entirely sure.

Friend Opportunity is largely an appealing set of sounds and hooks that occasionally cohere into great songs. And even when those hooks don’t come together as maybe they should (like “Kids Are So Small,” a song held together mainly by the insistent repetition of the oh-so-quotable “if I were a man and you were dog, I’d throw stick for you”) the sounds are so happy shiny awesome that you shorten your attention span to compensate, so that every measure is like opening another box of Cracker Jacks and finding a brand new toy. Unfortunately it all falls apart on the last track, “Look Away,” which by all accounts is a sort of throwback to the more experimental side of Deerhoof that I’m not familiar with myself. This would be okay except that the song takes up a full third of the album’s 36-minute running time. As a result, Friend Opportunity leaves less of a lasting impression by virtue of losing a big chunk to distracted, directionless noodling. Pretend the album is a 24-minute EP instead, though, and you’ve got the aural equivalent of a kid’s ballpit: full of bright colours and fun noises.