Not wont to lie dormant, noise stalwarts Deerhoof have announced their next studio album, following a plethora of releases last year: an exceptional studio album, on top of a covers album of dizzyingly mighty futurist mid century artists, and a collaborative live release with avant-garde jazz artist Wadada Leo Smith.
Unlike it’s predecessor, the ecologically brooding and eerily prescient ‘Future Teenage Cave Artists’, Deerhoof’s upcoming album ‘Actually, You Can’ draws attention to the exuberant love and care often forgotten by the upper echelons of society. Deerhoof manoeuvre through this celebratory haven in a genre-liberating “baroque DIY”, overcoming capitalism’s constricting hold with just two guitars, bass, drums, and vocals.
‘Department of Corrections’ encapsulates the album’s affectionate declaration, springing with zealously barbed guitar riffs aplenty. It also – alongside other exorbitantly joyous vocal tics from vocalist/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki – relishes exhibits the album’s ironic setting of biblical references against a soaking of noise rock (a coupling initially explored on breakthrough albums Reveille, Apple O’, and The Runners Four): “…you turn my water into wine…”, Matsuzaki intones with effervescent delight.
The track questions the prison industrial complex within the equally literal and metaphoric setting of The Last Supper, as the band explain:
“It’s about Judas going electric. It’s about how the human species itself is meaningless without a planet to live on. How we vastly outnumber our would-be masters if only we could get organised.”
The video for ‘Department of Corrections’, made by Jess Joy, sees the band juxtaposed with Joy’s own illustrations and cardboard cut-outs. Joy explains the visuals here:
“The video rhetorically questions authority. Who runs the show? A dying sun? Mushrooms? In wondering why we put limitations on our freedom, we realise that the people we have put in charge also do not know.”
See the video for ‘Department for Corrections’ below.
‘Actually, You Can’ is released on Joyful Noise Records October 22nd; the album is available for pre-order digitally and on Chlorophyll coloured vinyl, CD, and cassette here. The vinyl will be released November 19th.
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