Two figures of experimental music from different ends of the musical spectrum unite for a cause that has brought much of the country together as it did with them. Deerhoof’s Bandcamp exclusive To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough is a new, live album that dropped July 3, 2020, closely following their widely praised Future Teenage Cave Artist LP.
While Future Teenage Cave Artist reflects the anxiety of confronting the world’s challenges as they existed at the dawn of the ’20s, it was dropped just four days after an historical turning point, the police killing of George Floyd. With America suddenly facing a reckoning of its heritage of racial inequity in the aftermath, Deerhoof chose the Bandcamp Friday event to address this struggle — not so by its songs — but by directing the proceeds of the sale of this concert memento to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The lineup of songs run the twenty-year gamut from early “Polly Bee” from The Man, The King, The Girl all the way to tunes from their second last studio long player Mountain Moves. If you took close notice of this article’s title, though, there’s more to it than that: for the last five of this eleven-song set, the band is joined on stage by a progressive/experimental music giant from the jazz side, trumpet master Wadada Leo Smith.
The appearance of Smith brings home not just the racial unity this country needs but also points to the overlap between these two acts that might not be very apparent on the surface. You see, I came to Deerhoof from jazz: guitarist John Dieterich, drummer Greg Saunier and vocalist/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki all contributed to albums that’s come across my desk which are led or co-led by jazz musicians . If you never hear Deerhoof, you can tell from these sideman roles alone that the band is full of advanced improvisers. Deerhoof even started out as an all-instrumental band until Matsuzaki came on board before their first record. The band functions as a way to channel their proficiencies into something truly fresh and meaningful within the broad wrapper of indie rock.
Wadada Leo Smith’s improvisational skills are off the charts, too, and like Deerhoof, has a vision to match it. Only with him, it’s within the broad wrapper of ‘jazz.’ But labels don’t really mean much to either Deerhoof or Smith, and the former welcoming the latter on stage is as natural to them as when another progressive jazz icon Matana Roberts played on the title track of 2017’s Mountain Moves (which, incidentally, is covered on the non-Smith part this live document).
So the first six songs are played by Deerhoof alone and this well-oiled machine do their songs justice. When Wadada joins them, the band members adjust some but stay very much themselves.
“Snoopy Waves” shows off Deerhoof’s underrated syncopated funk bonafides like the opener “Believe E.S.P.”, but when Smith enters, they loosen up and the guitars of Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez seem to sandwich the trumpeter with tasty short remarks. Smith turns “Breakup Songs” into something like a leftover track from Jack Johnson, and on “Flower,” he finds crevices into which to insert his horn around Matsuzaki’s vocal.
It isn’t until “Last Fad” when Deerhoof breaks well outside of their 2-3 minute song length routine and truly jam on a stretched version of the song. After Matsuzaki sings a verse, Smith launches right into it and lands into the Dieterich/Rodriguez guitar salad. Saunier leads the band through a lot of tempo modulations and pattern changes that of course doesn’t faze the guest band member at all.
The spectral guitars that signify “Mirror Monster” are this time fronted by Smith’s horn instead of the vocals at first, and when Matsuzaki later sings her verses, they become calls to Smith’s responses as the rest of the group goes silent. On that pensive spirit, the set ends.
Get good music, help a cause and celebrate the union of two powerful improvising forces. May there be many more such unions.
Go here to grab your copy of To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough.
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