Deerhoof’s Damaged Eyes due out 29th May
DEERHOOF
Announce “Damaged Eyes Squinting into the Beautiful Overhot Sun”
The third and final single taken from new album Future Teenage Cave Artists
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez
Released 29th May 2020 via Joyful Noise Recordings
Over the past couple of years while making their new album, Deerhoof have been asking themselves if there was any music they could create that expressed how our rapidly changing future might actually feel. The band envisioned an album about people haunted by memories of a lost world and every failed attempt to save it. People already living outside the system, already surviving with new ways of life —these hopeful heroes are Deerhoof’s inspiration. These are the Future Teenage Cave Artists.
The fourth and final single from Deerhoof’s ‘Future Teenage Cave Artists’ is track #10 “Damaged Eyes Squinting into the Beautiful Overhot Sun” which continues their exploration through their trademark barrage of noise rock, framented r&b and whispered three-part harmonies.
Here’s the laying down the foundations to the track: Damaged Eyes started out as John’s attempt to figure out how a Blake Mills song went. He failed and got bored and started writing riffs on top of it and sent it to the rest of the band, who gave him the thumbs up. Satomi sang into her telephone. Inspired, Greg sang into the microphone on his laptop. With no ending to the song in sight, one of Ed’s demos magically appeared and found its home as the beautiful and terrible conclusion of the song. As the earth melts, so too does the song. Greg implores sadly, quoting Bach: “I call on thee.”Unintentionally prophetic, the wider album peers into the end times and suggests that it’s not only the food systems, energy systems, and political systems that will have to be rebuilt. Myths, stories, and rituals we use to make sense of the world are up for revision, too. The music of Future Teenage Cave Artists asks: How does one adapt—mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually—to an increasingly threat-filled and rapidly shifting world? Might our networks of mutual aid be our best example of civilization, our DIY basement shows be the real high art?
One answer might be found in the two-and-a-half decades that this improbable combination of personalities and backgrounds we call Deerhoof has spent on stage, cultivating agility, quick-wittedness, and a loose approach to improvisation. This is a record about resilience and the persistence of hope in a future beyond any reasonable justification for it. Like so many young people today, Deerhoof seems to be already living in that future.
“Damaged Eyes Squinting into the Beautiful Overhot Sun” follows the album’s first three singles “Farewell’ Symphony” , “Future Teenage Cave Artists” and “The Loved One.”