Get three American groups together to play three touchstone albums in their entirety. The idea couldn’t have been simpler, and yet the musical alchemy was far greater than the already considerable sum of its parts. Without preamble, at 7pm sharp, the Californian quartet Deerhoof embarked on a recital of their 2004 concept album Milk Man, a madcap masterpiece which Spin magazine declared to be “a perfect album”.
Although gifted musicians, the band played with a pell-mell enthusiasm that was almost punk-like in its intensity as they fused cool, avant-pop melodies with jagged, stop-start riffs and weird jazz-rock time signatures. They all performed brilliantly, with the highly physical drumming of the group’s de facto leader Greg Saunier an especially breathtaking spectacle to behold.
Dinosaur Jr gave a somewhat contrasting account of themselves, as the three-man juggernaut from Massachusetts cranked up the volume and shrugged their way through Bug, the 1988 album which put them on the underground map and paved the way for the grunge-rock revolution. The Gandalf-like guitarist J. Mascis ramped up the brash but beautiful chord sequences of Freak Scene and No Bones, which he sang in a meandering, barely-audible croak. But while the fagged-out, slacker aesthetic may be a cool option for guys in their twenties, the appeal tends to wane once middle-aged spread has kicked in.
There was no slacking from Flaming Lips, whose presentation of their breakthrough 1999 album The Soft Bulletin was so over the top that it was out of this world. Emerging from a door in an eyeball projected on a circular screen à la Pink Floyd at the back of the stage, the group from Oklahoma threw everything they had into a show that was part rock concert, part fin de siècle party. Balloons cascaded from the roof, streamers shot up and stuck to the lighting gantries, clouds of confetti blasted over the heads of the 10,000- capacity crowd. There were lasers, strobes, dry ice and the familiar vision of the singer Wayne Coyne surfing over the crowd in his plastic inflatable ball. And they were still only on side one, track one: Race for the Prize.
Coyne talked between songs (rather too much), adding a curiously self- deprecating commentary as the beautifully assembled album unfolded. “If we played this album every night, it wouldn’t be such a special occasion,” he said, a simple truth that was key to the appeal of this unique event.
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Deerhoof play the Barbican, July 12