Though I'm a bigger fan of Deerhoof's first album, The Man, the King and the Girl, Holdypaws is probably a better place for the newcomer to start. Where the band's debut alternated actual melodies with meandering bits of downtown-style guitar noise, everything on here could easily be classified as a "song." While this isn't a bad thing in itself, this stab at tunefulness is ultimately too straight an approach for a band this weird, and it doesn't quite seem to fit into Deerhoof's larger scheme.
Musically, the Deerhoof of Holdypaws sounds very much like a less-refined Blonde Redhead. This development represents a steady progression toward relative normality from Deerhoof's debut, a double 7" on Menlo Park that contained no singing at all. Come to think of it, that early single barely had any bass or drums on it either; as I recall, it consisted of a few sporadic blasts of guitar distortion in between vinyl pops and crackles. (Needless to say, I don't pull that single out very often.)
But back to Holdypaws-- one reason this album doesn't work as well for me is that I'm beginning to see lead- screecher Satomi's limitations as a vocalist. Hearing her high-pitched, artless wailing every second or third song on the last album seemed about perfect; here it pops up on every track. So, while this song-oriented approach will initiate the timid into Deerhoof's strange world, I'm less inclined to stick around for the entire ride.
A word or two about that strange world, by the way. Deerhoof's songs universally portray a surreal, nightmarish place seen through the eyes of a child, as if Glenn Branca composed a soundtrack to "Where the Wild Things Are." Songs like "Queen of the Lake," "The Moose's Daughter" and "Crow" describe an interior landscape populated by shadowy, half-beast mutants, which are all given voice by Satomi. There are no songs about "relationships" or anything else vaguely connected to the sane world's agreement about what constitutes reality; this is the stuff of dreams, and as such, they are effectively creepy and strange. But music with subject matter this abstract cries out for instrumental interludes and textures, brief soundtracks to help transport us from place to place. Holdypaws only provides us with some decent tunes.
