deerhoof are a disturbing lot, not because they are particularly “radical,” (they are not) or what not, but because they could not be more anti-music if they tried. they despise melody, rhythm, and although saunier can boast of being a classically trained musician, one is left to wonder if he left music school because he couldn’t hack it, or if was because his hatred of music became internalized.

deerhoof continues down the post modern spiral of nihilism, and belches up tunes that are a mockery of melody. in a sense, they are the perfect sound track for the age. the era where what is good is discarded, and beauty is mocked and trampled under foot. instead of dreams, or impressions, we live in an artistic era of hyper-realism, that is neither a reflection of the truth, nor a critique of it.
in deer hoof we have un-distilled reductionism, where music reduced to its basest components, and all but the skeleton remains. the time signatures are jarring and psychotic, and the melodies are non-existent. in truth, the singer can’t sing, and of course saunier held this up to be a virtue. a singer who can’t sing and no songs are there to be sung anyway.
of course deerhool is a “cool” band. they have a loyal following of artistically stunted and disheveled masses, who hear bland tunes such as “panda, panda” as a backdrop to their ever bland and artless lives. deer hoof is obscurantist in the extreme, and when one really delves beneath the surface one discovers that the emperor is indeed wearing no clothes. this is just another indier-than-thou band that creates sonic nightmares that are the musical equivalent of a five year old’s crayon drawing. and like the five year old’s crappy crayon drawing, you are obliged to leave it hanging on the fridge door til time immemorial. with deerhoof one must not admit that this band sucks terribly, lest one be cast out of the cult of the “cool,” where originality is daily massacred, and the group-think is alive and well.