Think back to when you were 16.

No one could tell you what to do. You were a force to be reckoned with, filled with the undeniable feeling that you could take on anything and win.

Having formed in 1994, Deerhoof has now reached that fateful age and by rites it’s their turn to go out and challenge the world. As if on some adolescent impulse, this year Satomi Matsuzaki, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Greg Saunier, just up and split from San Francisco, the only home they've ever known as a band, and left behind all notions of 'what a Deerhoof record sounds like.'

The result is Deerhoof vs. Evil. The band’s eleventh album and the musical equivalent of hormones raging out of control. It explodes out of the speakers with a gawky triumph and inflamed sentimentality. These are songs that practically demand that you dance and sing along. Right from the start you know you’re hearing a daring band of the consequences of failing. 

The New York Times call Deerhoof “one of the most original rock bands to have come along in the last decade” and, frankly, we couldn’t agree more.

Self-recorded, mixed and mastered in rehearsal spaces and basements with no engineers or outside input, Deerhoof vs. Evil dresses up their well-known reckless exuberance and splashes their sonic colours into the most unexpected combinations.

It is Deerhoof’s ode to their adolescence, and after one listen you know it’s going to be a “Sweet 16.”