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This warped idea is hugely effective on ‘Return of the Return of the Fire Trick Star’, a single from their twentieth LP, ‘Noble and Godlike In Ruin’. Despite being so prolific for so long, the San Francisco four-piece remains ragged: they will not refine their ideas, allowing them to exist in their rawest forms. Here, they have turned to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for inspiration and render its existential anguish with concise, visceral abandon.
Matsuzaki’s lyrics lay out the angst of Shelley’s novel in innocent-sounding little couplets: “Tell me I am more than underbar / Raise me like a pretty buttercup”, and “Have some sympathy / Did I mean to be?” The book has been pared down into its sharpest, barest form, and warped a little in the process - “Raise me like a pretty buttercup” has echoes of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel Poor Things, which itself is a wonderful distortion of Shelley’s tale. Speaking of distortion, there is no lack of it on ‘Fire Trick Star’, which uses a queasy, detuned string section as a counter to Matsuzaki’s vocal, as well as a nervous bassline which anxiously accelerates towards the end of the track.
Deerhoof is operating with the same intensity as it always has, perhaps even more - ‘Fire Trick Star’ is not just a foray into literary territory, but a potent distillation of a story, as unrefined and stitched-together as Frankenstein's monster itself.
