If San-X (one of the leading manufacturers of cute Japanese merchandise... think Hello Kitty, et al) sponsored a basketball team, their warm-up anthem would be “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back” from Deerhoof’s new album, Offend Maggie. In this track characteristic of the San Francisco band's style — lyrical sparseness coupled with instrumental frenzy — vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki sings in an endearing staccato, “Rebound, rebound, reProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0
und/Ready okay/Bunny jump/Bunny jump,” over vigorous drum-guitar combos.
While the tracks of Offend Maggie range from giddy to poppy and dance-y, they all exemplify a certain absurdity — seemingly created for listeners with boundless energy and brief spans of attention. “This is God Speaking” is 1:15 minutes of chimes, bells, beeps and mostly unintelligible words (they might as well be playing backwards), while the album’s namesake track is a catchy tale of unanswered telephone calls: “Ring ring/I hang up/A bother.” This lighthearted track asks to be danced to at a live performance, and indeed, the bounding rhythms of the entire disc will have you jumping back and forth in exhilaration. Be prepared to find yourself wanting your heart rate to slow down... while still hoping the music won’t stop.
