music Last fall, I attended the Flaming Lips’ gloriously flamboyant show at the Charlottesville Pavilion. Deerfhoof opened that night and they seemed dwarfed by the whole thing: the set, the venue, the Lips. On Saturday night, though, they dominated the closed confines of the Satellite Ballroom, saturating the room with brilliant white noise.
Deerhoof’s John Dieterich is a guitar maestro. One of many elements on the majestic new album, Friend Opportunity, Dietrich is unleashed live. While lead singer/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki chirped off to the side and drummer Greg Saunier banged his toy-sized kit, Dieterich played soaring, screeching notes in front of a kaleidoscope of colors that swirled behind him on a projection screen.
Earlier in the day, Saunier talked to 40 music students at Old Cabell Hall about his songwriting process. Saunier recounted his days as a student of UVA music Professor Fred Maus in Baltimore, and revealed that Matsuzaki was only in the U.S. for a week (from Tokyo) before she joined the band.
Most of Matsuzaki’s vocals are unintelligible—more yelps than words—but they add to the texture of the song. “Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo,” she cooed on the beginning of “Our Angel’s Ululu,” before Saunier and Dieterich fell in, letting loose with a furious series of blasts that shook me with delight. Up ahead, I recognized Maus bobbing his head to his former student’s beat. When the song ended, I leaned forward. “This is amazing,” I yelled. He smiled and nodded. “Yes, it is.”