For as much effort as has gone into previous posts, you may have been expecting a grand thesis to accompany my number one slot. But since this was my first-ever published album review – with a few tweaks since then, of course – I thought it only appropriate to let it speak for itself. Honestly, after mulling over this album for nearly a year now, I can’t think of a better way to say exactly how highly I think of this record.
Midway through Deerhoof’s eighth LP Friend Opportunity, lead vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki coos over a stripped piano ballad, “It’s a trap/ It’s a vicious trap!” – a bare, disquieting moment that lyrically sums up, yet melodically belies the labyrinthine structure of the album. From the breakneck romp of opener “The Perfect Me” to the ever-shifting moods of “Cast Off Crown,” this concise and complex follow-up to 2005’s The Runners Four achieves the same sprawling experimentation of its predecessor in almost half the time. Containing some of their most accessible songs to date, such as the stand-out single “Matchbook Seeks Maniac,” only to be followed by the album’s closer “Look Away” – a 12-minute wall of noise, at times reminiscent of the jazzy imensity of Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, at other times of a more rehearsed Jandek – Friend Opportunity has Deerhoof pushing their aesthetic further than ever, tightening its corners for their most palatable, yet elusive record yet. In that sense, the San Francisco trio has taken a significant step forward and pulled off a stunning recreation that adds up to the absolute best album of 2007.
