Mountain Moves

 Deerhoof is right there with you. They recognize that we are simultaneously living in two worlds, one a maniacal, mainstream monoculture hell-bent on driving humankind into extinction, the other a churning underground teeming with ideas and dogged optimism and the will to thrive and survive. Mountain Moves refutes the former by ecstatically celebrating the latter.

Though Deerhoof have often made albums from start to finish with virtually no input from the outside world, now is not the time for artists to operate in isolation. Mountain Moves throws the doors wide open. Working quickly, the band invited myriad guests to participate, some of them dear friends, others practically strangers. They are of different ages, different nationalities, different disciplines. The only common thread was that each and every artist on Mountain Moves doesn't fit into a single, neatly-defined category – and doesn't wish to.

Collisions and collusions abound on Mountain Moves. In addition to its bounty of originals, the program includes three covers that epitomize the album's assemblage of disparate ideas and personalities. Reducing Bob Marley's "Small Axe" to a beat-less fragment of hymn-like simplicity magnifies the song's rebellious spirit and undercurrent of violence. Deerhoof vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki, a Japanese immigrant, lifts the Staple Singers' "Freedom Highway" out of its original place and time, imbuing it with a new sense of alienation from one's own country. Snippets of the bass recitative "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth" from Handel's Messiah provide the foundation for a fresh take on Chilean folk hero Violeta Parra's bittersweet masterpiece "Gracias a la Vida."