Bostonist owns a stick of Old Spice deodorant that says "Controlled Release Technology" on the packaging. We don't understand this phrase in the context of personal hygiene, but during Tuesday night's Deerhoof show, we definitely experienced something that fit the description. Deerhoof unleashed bursts of noise with intense precision into a packed Middle East Downstairs. Deerhoof has their own brand of controlled release technology when they play "Scream Team"; delightful hairpin turns and sensory overload. (The Deerhoof brand does not inhibit perspiration: bassist Chris Cohen sweated into a headband and matching soccer jersey, while Greg Saunier mopped his arms across his soaked brow whenever he wasn't drumming himself into a frenzy.)
Opening with "This Magnificent Bird Shall Rise" from 2002's Reveille, but ignoring the audience's shouts of "Panda! Panda!", Deerhoof largely relied upon material from their most recent album, the allegedly "mainstream" "straight-up guitar rock"The Runners Four, including "Odyssey," Saunier's gentle, dreamlike duet with guitarist John Dieterich, and the catchy "Wrong Time Capsule". While previous shows have highlighted Satomi Matsuzaki's birdlike singing or her talent for dancing with oversized knitted fruit, this one emphasized her guitar playing, eschewing the usual props and sometimes even vocals. She didn't put down her guitar until late in the evening, when she took up a bell on a stick and climbed atop a monitor to gesture dramatically and regard the audience with a robotic gaze, which was disarming, in a girl-shaped robot way.
Three hours of well-chosen opening acts preceded Deerhoof, beginning with L'Ocelle Mare, a gangly fellow who played intricate, springloaded pieces on an acoustic guitar. His whole body seemed to tense up, coiled around his guitar, while his face contorted to scrutinize the movements of his fingers, sometimes playing at breakneck speed, sometimes plucking strings for an eerie, japonesque effect. He ended every song abruptly, mouthed inaudible thanks, and nodded shyly before quietly beginning the next. At one point, a rattling gourd served as a guitar pick and a microphone lay between his feet to catch the frantic rhythms he would tap out on the floor.
Le Ton Mite had the demeanor, and the bright orange smock, of a fifth-grade art teacher. His bite-sized vignettes, sung softly in English and occasionally en français, were illustrated with laminated paper shapes that took turns dangling from a microphone stand. An orange moon rose, a bus ran out of gas, and a tree fell suddenly, all in an idyllic landscape populated by deer and clouds with beards and faceless people in bathing suits. Le Ton Mite had the crowd supply the uh huh's for a song called "Damn You People Are Fine, Some Of You Are Going To Make Love Tonight," and accomodated one audience member's demands for a duet, inviting him onstage and singing the possibly extemporaneous "You Put Circles In The Sky."
The evening lost some momentum during a spoken word and dance piece performed by Starter Set featuring Legs & Pants Dans Theatre , if only because the grumbling audience had to retreat several yards backwards to clear a "stage" on the floor. Amid the audience's mutterings of "not gonna happen" and "this is the Middle East," Bostonist complied with the dancers' request that we sit down ("It's that kind of a show"), getting cross-legged in the dust and congealed Pabst Blue Ribbon, letting our knees bump awkwardly into unfamiliar knees. A family photo album cycled through a slide projector while four women danced inventively and took turns reading an oblique monologue about a half-remembered encounter on a cold day in Copenhagen. (The Herald called it "a visual feast of motion and drama"; it's also been called a dancing Laurie Anderson ripoff; Bostonist was preoccupied with the novelty of seeing the venue's typically chattery crowd shut up and sit still for a choreographed modern dance piece.)
Projected onto a screen while the musicians dragged their equipment on and off the stage, Martha Colburn's short films were a pulsing collage of vintage pornography, found footage, advertising, and hand-drawn animation: cherubic children huffing cartoon bottles of cartoon turpentine; endangered species growing perfect breasts; pinup girls transforming into grinning skeletons. The films glued together an exhaustingly eclectic evening that turned out less like a Deerhoof show than an unexpected vaudevillian variety show starring Deerhoof.
Post and photo contributed by C. Fernsebner
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