Album Review: Deerhoof - Breakup Song

The easiest way to describe Breakup Song is to say that it's a Deerhoof album. The San Francisco four-piece always hang their eclectic menageries on the jagged hook of pop, yet there's no other way to define their music other than to state that it is a whole unique sound, a candy-coloured wonderland of sonic adventures delivered with irrepressible vitality and a childlike marvel. Whilst Breakup Song came with the disclaimer it was Cuban-based, nothing can be taken for granted – you're in their world now.

And with all Deerhoof records, it's a garish kaleidoscopic collage of ideas and flights of fancy. Semi-titular Breakup Songs is an effective opening salvo, an eclectic schizophrenic number of rasping riffs and devilish grins masquerading as an accessible delicacy. There are some tracks that adhere to the Cuban inflections – The Trouble With Candyhands in particular, especially the horns and rumba rhythms. Yet this is a ruse, yet another curveball in a back catalogue jam-packed with them.

Mothball The Fleet is a slightly darker futuristic sci-fi fable, wrapped in gossamer wistfulness and '80s-centric synth. One of the strangest yet most effective tracks is To Fly Or Not To Fly – the epic synth drive that leads in sounds like it's heading into Zola Jesus terrain before jumping into a sparse glitch vacuum with Matsuzaki's ping-pong vocals, then a crunching guitar wash more akin to A Place To Bury Strangers crashes down – the whole thing is done and dusted in less than two minutes. John Dieterich's guitar is particularly electric, especially on the spastic rhythms of the delicious We Do Parties.

Breakup Song is thankfully as indecipherable, unexplainable and enjoyable as Deerhoof can get.