deerhoof love-lore

stream Deerhoof's insane surprise-released 43-song covers medley LP

Deerhoof have surprise released new album Love-Lore, a 35-minute medley weaving together 43 covers of songs from the ’50s -’80s, including the Knight Rider theme, John Williams‘ theme to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Sun Ra‘s “They Dwell on Other Planes,” Burt Bacharach‘s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” John Cage‘s “Empty Words,” The B-52s‘ “Song for a Future Generation,” Voivod‘s “Macrosolutions to Megaproblems,” Paul Williams‘ “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie, the Jetsons theme, Ornette Coleman, Velvet UndergroundEddie Grant‘s “Electric Avenue,” and lots more.

Love-Lore was recorded entirely live in one afternoon at NYC’s Rivington Rehearsal Studios on the Lower East Side. It’s a wild and crazy and amazing as it sounds and you can listen to the whole thing, and read an essay about the album by Muindi Fanuel Muindi, below.

This is Deerhoof’s second album of 2020, having released Future Teenage Cave Artists back in May.

DEERHOOF – LOVE-LORE TRACKLIST

ORNETTE COLEMAN • IN ALL LANGUAGES
JOHN DONALD ROBB • EXCERPT FROM SPATIAL SERENADE
VOIVOD • MACROSOLUTIONS TO MEGAPROBLEMS
EARL KIM • EARTHLIGHT
STU PHILLIPS • KNIGHT RIDER
RAYMOND SCOTT • OHIO BELL
MAURICIO KAGEL • MUSIC FOR RENAISSANCE INSTRUMENTS
EDDIE GRANT • ELECTRIC AVENUE
GARY NEWMAN • CARS
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN • KONTAKTE
THE BEACH BOYS • WONDERFUL
GERALD FRIED • STAR TREK: BALANCE OF TERROR
PAULINE OLIVEROS • ALL FOURS
PAUL WILLIAMS • RAINBOW CONNECTION
JAMES TENNEY • FOR ANN (RISING)
SILVER APPLES • OSCILLATIONS
KRAFTWERK • WE ARE THE ROBOTS
JOHN WILLIAMS • CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
THE POLICE • DRIVEN TO TEARS
MORTON FELDMAN • PATTERNS IN A CHROMATIC FIELD
SUN RA • THEY DWELL ON OTHER PLANES
PARLIAMENT • UNFUNKY UFO
ASHA PUTHLI • SPACE TALK
ENNIO MORRICONE • OTTAVE COMANDAMENTO: CORRI VELOCE
MILTON BABBITT • HOMILY FOR SNARE DRUM
THE B52S • SONG FOR A FUTURE GENERATION
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA • MECHANICAL ACCORDION
VINICIUS DE MORAES / BADEN POWELL • O ASTRONAUTA
DIONNE WARWICK • DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOSE?
DAVID GRAEBER • OF FLYING CARS AND THE DECLINING RATE OF PROFIT
DEREK BAILEY • IMPROVISATION
WILLIAM HANNA / HOYT CURTIN • THE JETSONS
ANTHONY BRAXTON • C-M=B05
GYORGY KURTAG • SHADOWS FOR CONTRABASS SOLO
ERIC SIDAY • THE PERKING COFFEE POT
IGOR STRAVINSKY • VARIATIONS ALDOUS HUXLEY IN MEMORIAM
CAETANO VELOSO • PULSAR
LUIGI NONO • UNO ESPRESSIONE
KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI • THRENODY FOR THE VICTIMS OF HIROSHIMA
JOHN CAGE • EMPTY WORDS
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND • ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES
LAURIE ANDERSON • EXAMPLE #22

ESSAY ON “LOVE-LORE” BY MUINDI FANUEL MUINDI

“Where are the flying cars?” The lament of a generation that knew better than to trust spinners of fairy tales but were gullible enough to fall for those spin-doctors that called themselves “futurologists.”

Spinners of fairy tales asked us to hold out hope for a “eu-catastrophe” — a sudden improbable turn for the better that can never be counted on to occur, never mind to recur, and that may be the flip-side of a “dys-catastrophe,” an improbable turn for the worse. Futurologists, by contrast, provided us with probable projections and visions of the future, and treated catastrophic turns as mere plot devices — gimmicks that betray inexorable movements towards the end of history: a techno-utopian future or a techno-anesthetic future. These prophets of the inevitable insisted that, sooner rather than later, the logic of capitalism would provide, if not flying cars, some other vehicle to a fantastic end: the end of hunger, disease, or war.

So why, instead, have we been offered a “Screen New Deal” and processions of computer-generated simulacra? Ay, there’s the rub. — For futurologists, thinking of their own futures above all else, were less interested in fantastic ends than in guiding investment and making the fantastic seem probable through modeling and projection. So instead of flying cars, we have big data and special effects, a result that has suited the richest investors, the 1%, just fine.

Enter Deerhoof and other despairing merry makers of the vernacular avant-garde, the lovers of beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh.

Deerhoof is not the future of music and doesn’t want to be—they simply want to embrace you, here and now, in the present. Yes, you! You catastrophe, you! You improbable accident of birth, you! You don’t have to be hoped for against all reason, you already exist: you just want to be embraced for what you are and what you have the potential to become, and you don’t give a fuck about what future trends indicate you ought to become. You are to be loved in the no-man’s land between the past and the future that separates the fairy tales of bygone spinners from the future trends of spin-doctors: the only place where feats of imagination, ingenuity, and iterated trial and error make a difference.

Deerhoof has returned to the post-war past only to arrive at ever-present unanswered questions — to leap from the ever-present past into the no-man’s land of the present-current, where the future and the flying cars have yet to arrive. The sonic landscape of the present where Deerhoof has landed is a blasted landscape. Love-Lore is a funeral for futures obliterated by projections from a toxic past, A Threnody to the Victims of Probable Futures Never to Come.

But, just like the matsutake proliferate in blasted natural landscapes and nurture wild forests, a sensitive listener will find wild aural pleasures proliferating in Deerhoof’s sonic wasteland, nurturing wild vernacular musics. So, listen as jingles and pomp for techno-futures collapse into disillusioned chants of “no future” and yield to strains of afrofuturist lore inflected so as to become delectably mundane, earth(l)y like matsutake. Listen and learn how to gather the forest, to laugh and stay in the wonderful present.