Deerhoof / Chain & the Gang

The moment before Chain & the Gang took the stage at the 9:30 Club, the curtains parted briefly and I caught a glimpse of frontman Ian Svenonius tilting his head back to take a sip of orange soda. His backing band, clad in baggy, striped prisoners’ outfits, shambled onto the stage a few steps ahead of him. Then came Svenonius in a Nickelodeon-orange suit. Reflecting on his status of being not just the legendary frontman of such bands as Make-Up, Weird War, and Nation of Ulysses, but also the curator of an immaculate personal aesthetic, I couldn’t help but wonder, Which came first: the beverage or the suit? Either seemed equally plausible. Svenonius walked across the lip of the stage, extending an arm for high-fives. The people in the front row looked confused and hesitant, perhaps still blinded by the otherworldly glow of his outfit. He reached the middle of the stage before someone took him up on the high-five offer, and so the tone was set for a pretty phenomenal performance that was lost on most people in the room.

Chain & the Gang play laid back, bluesy grooves punctuated by Svenonius’s witty maxims and occasional shrieks. Or, as the guy behind me said, “What a stupid concept for a band: take 12-bar blues and wrap one dumb lyric around it.” I was tempted to ask him if he’d ever heard of “rock ‘n’ roll,” but I resisted, since it hasn’t been BNM’d yet or anything and I thought it rude to brandish my street cred like that. Instead, I was content to watch the reigning Sassiest Boy in America do air kicks and offer up deadpan musings on topics like the record industry (“Their new record is so dull it’s prescribed to insomniacs,” he says of an unnamed band on “Trash Talk”) and the economic downturn (“With all these factories closing down, who’s going to make that Detroit sound?”). It wasn’t groundbreaking stuff, nor was it quite as spirited at some of Svenonius’s previous acts, but it was irresistibly fun.

Or so I thought, anyway. Most of the crowd seemed woefully confused and even bored by Svenonius’s particular brand of cool. “It’s a hard job keeping everybody high,” he said in the lull between songs, which I took to be a comment on the crowd. But as it turns out, it was just the introduction to a song called “It’s a Hard Job Keeping Everybody High.”

It’s safe to say that most people were there to see Deerhoof, and that unassuming drum god Greg Saunier was much more in line with the crowd’s prevailing notion of cool. (“That’s Greg Saunier. He’s so cool,” muttered the 12-bar blues guy as the band set up their gear, and this time he was right.) Saunier, like everyone else in this current incarnation of Deerhoof, is alive with boundless, exuberant energy and an absolute joy to watch. Whether she’s playing bass or not, Satomi Matsuzaki treats every Deerhoof song like a calisthenic routine, complete with inspired hand gestures and frequent jumping jacks. John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez’s manic guitar lines tangle and occasionally soar free from the natural world like firecrackers shooting through an electric sky. And metaphor fails in describing what it’s like to watch Saunier play: suffice to simply say he’s one of the best drummers in rock music.

When mixed in with a set list that lifted scattered tracks from throughout their discography, it became even clearer that the band’s latest, Deerhoof vs. Evil, contains some of their most accessible material yet. “What is this thing called love?” Matsuzaki cooed in “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness”‘s more peaceful moments, right before some characteristic Deerhoof chaos upended everything. The mellow, deviantly sweet “I Did Crimes for You” showcased less dynamism but gave Matsuzaki ample opportunity for her to employ some gun-themed hand gestures. The crunching chords of Offend Maggie (2008) opener “The Tears of Music and Love” were a definite highlight, though no song united the crowd more than the second encore, “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back.” Like an ebullient punk rock cheerleader, Matsuzaki lead the crowd in call-and-response: “Rebound! Rebound! Rebound! Rebound! Ready OK?” All the team spirit was enough to make you wish you lived in a world where Greg Saunier might be placed in a Tommy Lee-style drum cage and lowered from laser-streaked heights at the Super Bowl Halftime Show, but you probably concluded that you were better off here, seeing Deerhoof unceremoniously showcase their formidable chops and the inexhaustible sound of adventure.