Deerhoof’s shapeless endurance

After 20 years, 12 albums, and an impossibly long list of collaborations, Deerhoof still manages to surprise itself. Perhaps the only way to describe the San Francisco-based quartet is under the vague catchall of “experimental rock.” But trying to file Deerhoof’s sound under any descriptor is an exercise in futility. The band’s trajectory is like that of an aimless meteor or a drunken bird caught in a flurry of movement with no destination. Every album belies notions of consistency, and La Isla Bonita (Polyvinyl), Deerhoof’s latest release, is no exception.

Drummer Greg Saunier, the only founding member in the current lineup, lights up with the enthusiasm of a child banging on pots and pans for the first time, when talking about his experiences with Deerhoof. His sprightly demeanor stems from his drive to surprise, frustrate, and distance himself from, well, himself. “We’ve all fallen flat on our faces in front of each other so many times that there’s no fear,” Saunier says. “The beauty of being able to maintain a working creative relationship for a long time is that it gets more surprising.”

That element of unpredictability is the bedrock of Deerhoof’s longevity, an impressive feat in a time when indie rock bands are chewed up and spit out at an alarming rate. All members of the group brings their own stylistic chaos to the mix, leading to an ever-changing musical formula. Singer Satomi Matsuzaki is the most obvious force of spontaneity in the band. After her first week in the United States, with no prior band experience, she went on tour with Deerhoof and hasn’t left since.

Her childlike melodies provide an innocent foil to the dissonant flurry of guitarists Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich. Saunier’s drumming is even more unwieldy, like a pendulum swinging wildly between intricate math rock rhythms and Ringo Starr-like simplicity.

The off-kilter sing-a-long of La Isla Bonita’s opener, “Paradise Girls,” provides a perfect case study for Deerhoof’s playful idiosyncrasies. The track starts off with a straightforward rock pulse from Saunier, with Matsuzaki laying down an infectious chant of “Girls, girls, who are smart” while the rest of the band rips apart the time until the groove becomes an amorphous blast of joy. The track embodies the quartet’s blending of gaiety and catastrophe, optimism and discord. “This record was partly about going from an attempt to be Janet Jackson into realizing that we can only be Joan Jett,” Saunier says. “It’s the feeling that there may be more chaos coming in our country’s future if you aren’t among the rich.”

While the Jett and Jackson nods are half-serious, the comparison provides an apt metaphor for not only the new album, but the band’s entire career. Jackson evokes the infinite ideals of consumerism — immediately gratifying yet impossible to sustain. Jett stays afloat in the mainstream by leading the pack with an outsider’s appeal.

Deerhoof manages to resolve the ideological contradictions of Jett and Jackson by embracing the most accessible aspects of pop and the furthest reaches of rock. Even without ever listening to a single album, one can determine the group’s wide appeal from the long list of artists who have clamored for a Deerhoof remix.

Maroon 5, of all bands, was the first group to reach out to Deerhoof for a remix. After that the list gets even weirder with Sufjan Stevens, Xiu Xiu, and STRFKR all following Maroon 5’s lead. On his own, Saunier has performed with everyone from Yoko Ono, to Anthony Braxton, to David Byrne. “If the array of musicians who we’ve been lucky enough to play with seems wide, then that makes me feel nothing but joy,” he says. “It’s kind of a fight that a band has to fight over the years to stay homeless, and to refuse to settle into patterns too much.”

Stylistically speaking, Deerhoof has no home, no center, no core sound to be catalogued and written off by music journalists. After two decades, it would be a formidable struggle for any band trying to tap into an infinite wellspring of fresh creativity. Like every album that came before it, La Isla Bonita sounds miraculous, especially considering Deerhoof is well past the average breaking point for indie rock bands. “I’ve always thought that the image of the wellspring was completely ludicrous compared to reality,” Saunier says. “If there ever was a time where that image almost resembled reality, I’d say it’s right now.”