The chappees at fakejazz certainly love their 5RC. Tom Eigan and Tim Whalley walk around with dazed smiles and angry eyes, muttering about the greatness of Xiu Xiu. David Christenson once had uncontrollable seizures when he listened to Hella's Been a Long Time Cousin. Hey, we even interviewed the resident weirdo primativists in Deerhoof, a band that gets exponentially better with every record they release.
That isn't to say that the no wave assault of The Man, the King, and the Girl and Holdypaws' fractured love songs aren't good; they're great and I love them. However, on Reveille, all of their elements are thrown together and hosed down with 60s pop harmonies and the hamfisted flourishes of a new guitarist to create something new and absolutely compelling. Shadowy John Dieterich adds an element of insane guitar presence to the band that's been lacking on their previous releases, and his chunky riffs compliment Satomi's childlike vocals and keyboard perfectly. On tracks like the album's highlight, "This Magnificent Bird Will Rise," and the gorgeous "Our Angel's Ululu," the ferocious guitars and drums provide contrast to the sweet melodies that Satomi sings and plays, and the result is an outstandingly fractured pop music that sounds new and different to these young ears.
Jumping styles over the course of the album, Reveille tackles such diverse genres as synth-pop ("Top Tim Rubies"), monumental dirge ("The Last Trumpeter Swan"), and rock 'n' roll ("This Magnificent Bird Will Rise"). These various experiments alternately succeed and fail, and, while there are more successes, to a quality and extent to overpower the failures, those failures are nonetheless present. The bizarro No Wave experiment "No One Fed Me So I Stayed" is a minute of what sounds like a gagged hostage trying to alert a passing policeman to her presence in the trunk, and "The Last Trumpeter Swan's" eight minutes drag by relentlessly. Likewise, there are some pointless tracks, like the seven-second long "Tuning a Stray," which basically serves as an opener to the fun, wrecked rock of "Holy Night Fever"—why they just didn't merge the two into a single track is beyond me. Another failure on the album is the minute of church organs that is "All Rise"—I guess I can understand its significance in the framework of the album, but it's kind of annoying. Listen: if I wanted to hear church organs, I'd go to church. No, I'm just kidding. But really, come on. Church organs?
However, Deerhoof succeed much more than they fail, and Reveille success is where others have regularly failed: combining fun rock with bizarre experiments—and let me tell you, their results are more than just a little pleasing.
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