La Isla Bonita

Almost inevitably, the result is something that makes most commercial music look like a palid, indistinct, homogenous mass.

The foursome pack as many ideas as possible into each delirious minute. [14/21 Nov 2014, p.105]

The result is streamlined and raw, but still with their customary flourishes of melodic invention woven in. [Dec 2014, p.48]

Maverick pop genius soon reveals itself. [Dec 2014, p.96]

Deerhoof’s ability to channel its musical chops toward sharp political critique--while retaining moments of whimsical release--explains how the band has survived for 20 years and proves that it possesses the ingenuity to thrive for many decades to come.

This album aims straight for your hips and doesn't miss. [Dec 2014, p.104]

For anyone who’s ever wondered what sort of album a hybrid of Joan Jett and Janet Jackson would make, the answer is right here.

Refuse be fooled by the any cutesy pop leanings. La Isla Bonita is wonderful, but there are no all-inclusive resorts on this island.

Even the full-length's sleepier moments offer a break from its breakneck speed and succeed in balancing out an otherwise dizzying record.

Even on these songs, it feels more like Deerhoof are coming full circle than looking back; that they've been able to put different but cohesive spins on their sound so well, and for so long, is truly remarkable.

There isn't another band who make creativity sound so intensely joyous. [Dec 2014, p.75]

La Isla Bonita is harder, edgier and noisier than 2012's Breakup Song, but just as charming, off-kilter and curious.

Their 13th album, La Isla Bonita, is among their most accessible, reaching for moments of escapism that never entered the frame on 2012's Breakup Songs.

Tracks like "Doom" highlight how everyone present is essential to what is taking place, where a change to any element of that interaction would give a song a perceptibly different gait.

This is one of the tightest and most intricately arranged Deerhoof records, particularly rhythmically

Results are varied.... Luckily, Deerhoof's blahs are better than most people's best. [No. 116, p.57]

Whilst La Isla Bonita might end on a downer musically, this is an album that finds Deerhoof sounding refreshed and eager to go for another 20 years.

This is an album of difficult rhythms, squawking guitars and bohemian eccentricities that will leave fans delighted and everyone else baffled--just as their 12 others have done. Business as usual, then.

The best moments on La Isla Bonita evoke the inventiveness of Deerhoof's classic albums and their ability to explore seemingly limitless possibilities within their own (admittedly unique) framework.

What emerges is a basement-punk groove band where you're never quite sure where the groove will take you.

Traces of other bands can be heard everywhere, from the scuzzy math-rock of Doom (Battles) to the hard-riffing Exit-Only (Jon Spencer) but with vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki ensuring that they never sound quite like anyone else. [Dec 2014, p.108]

This reckless abandon practically screams out of La Isla Bonita, but the record falls short of total reinvention.

Closer Oh Bummer, sung by drummer Greg Saunier, is a straightforward moody rock song--at least for the first three minutes, after which a striking doomsday-meets-Thriller breakdown erupts, reminding diehard fans that the band members are still weirdos but also keeping fair-weather listeners at a distance.

The record is at its best when kept simplistic and spontaneous, but for much of it you sense they have thought about it a little too much and become a little too self-aware; for a band like Deerhoof that can lead into some pretty iffy territory.

Unfortunately, instead of rebuilding a sound structure (double meaning intended) with those scattered shards that Deerhoof has violently shaved off over its career, with La Isla Bonita, they’ve traced a nominal new work from a picture that never existed in such an ostensibly neatly composed way. Without that compositional tension hanging in its margins though, La Isla Bonita’s expressions, however inciting, remain just out of grasping reach, like an island mirage.