Gig review: Deerhoof and Divorce

Published on Wednesday 9 December 2009 19:56

BONGO CLUB, EDINBURGH *****

THIS was quite possibly the most avant-garde gig Edinburgh will see all year, but don't let that give you an excuse to dismiss either band as unlistenable rubbish. In the case of both groups exciting, crowd-pleasing entertainment was never far away.

First on the bill were Glasgow's Divorce, a four-girl, one-boy noise outfit who have already created their own "Nae Wave" movement. A battering ram of surly Art School performance, they pin their songs on the thundering rhythm section of drummer Andy Browntown and bassist VSO, and the yelled but still barely discernible vocals of Sinead Youth.

Dark and utterly unforgettable, they're one of the finest bands of any genre at the moment in Scotland, so San Francisco quartet Deerhoof deserve praise simply for upstaging their support act, the combination of great sound and an obvious excitement between band and sold-out audience contributing to a stunning set.

Musically, Deerhoof fuse psychedelic and garage rock guitar riffs with staccato jazz arrangements to create a sound that's uniquely unpredictable. This is largely down to their Japanese-Californian singer Satomi Matsuzaki, a woman given to making up her own dazzlingly ridiculous dance moves on the spot. With a girlish, high-pitched voice she converts some songs into simple tone poems by yelping out a few seemingly random words and syllables, and the effect is by turns angelic (The Perfect Me), thrilling (the rough-edged Plus 81) and amusingly twee (Panda Panda Panda).

During the first encore, Matsuzaki took to the drums while the band's drummer and founder Greg Saunier sang an unexpectedly precise cover of Canned Heat's Going Up The Country. Then, after another encore and with the crowd still calling for more, the PA had to be turned on to let this compulsively good live band escape.