BeatRoute Magazine [AB] print e-edition - [June 2018]

Deerhoof’s
artist selections
Deerhoof’s festival picks include nine musical acts,
one comedian and one short film
CHERRY GLAZERR
“I think we first became aware of them because they kept posting
Instagram photos of themselves with Deerhoof t-shirts [laughs]. So,
it was actually like them reaching out to us, and then us realizing that
we really loved their music. It’s bold, and like, brave. And it’s also kind of
garage-rocky, power-rocky… and we felt like we really
had a lot in common.”
EMPATH
“Garrett [Koloski],
the drummer,
“If
we
was playing drums
were
in Perfect Pussy, who
going
to
we really loved and had
toured with. And then when
try and
they stopped playing and moved to
represent
Philadelphia …the next thing we knew
Deerhoof’s
he had formed this other band! And, like, it’s
taste on a
as if half of what was going on in empath was
curated festival,
we were
straight from the textbook of Perfect Pussy. It’s so
aggressive, so loud. And then, the other half of it
definitely going
couldn’t have been more different… almost like
to be choosing
a quaint approach to songwriting [with] little
the artists that, you
musical surprises that were about notes and
know, that we think
rhythms and weren’t just about noise and
of as being more in our
destruction, you know.”
family tree. A bit more
kind of aggressive, and
less controlled.”
BECKY JAMES
“She’s an animator with whom we’re
very well acquainted, and just really huge fans of
her. Visually, sometimes very crude and simple looking, but kind
of philosophically and conceptually very neat. Sometimes complicated,
often troubled, and I think, ultimately, very emotional… we
felt aesthetically in common with her work, using really simple
materials to attempt to create something that’s still
very rich with possible meanings.”
GEORGE CHEN
“George Chen is someone we’ve
known really since the beginning of
Deerhoof, in the mid-nineties. He was a fixture
in the San Francisco Bay Area scene, and it seemed
like for every show, he was often the organizer of that show.
But he was always so funny, and could just make everybody laugh
all the time. [Deerhoof guitarist] John Dieterich takes credit for suggesting
to George that he should try stand-up, and like, I think a year
or two later John happened to bump into him on the sidewalk, and
George said he was on his way to try his first open mic.”
WYE OAK
“We were like really
vaguely acquainted with
Jenn [Wasner] for years.. we
asked her to sing on our record,
which she graciously did and made the
song so much better than it was. There was
a show last year in Baltimore… and she joined
us on stage. We did the song live, with her, which
we had never tried before, and it was tremendous. So,
we definitely had to see if Wye Oak was gonna be available
because we just really wanted to do the song again [laughs].
I mean, she’s great. She’s just an absolute master. Such a good
singer.”
30 | JUNE 2018 • BEATROUTE
ROCKPILE