Having formed in 1994, Deerhoof is now that fateful age and by rites it's the band's turn to go out and challenge the world. The same way a rebellious adolescent turns tough and irrational, Greg Saunier, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Satomi Matsuzaki 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 musical equivalent of hormones raging out of control, it explodes out of the speakers with its gawky triumph and inflamed sentimentality. These are songs that practically demand that you dance and sing along (however elastic the rhythms, or abrupt the melodies). To document their musical "coming-of-age" the band members could only trust themselves.

Besides their cover of an obscure Greek film soundtrack instrumental ("Let's Dance the Jet"), and a song done for NY artist Adam Pendleton's documentary film installation BAND ("I Did Crimes for You"), these songs were completely self-recorded, mixed and mastered in practice spaces and basements with no engineers or outside input. Ironically the result is polished, blissfully exuberant, and huge-sounding. Going DIY meant freedom to reinvent themselves, playing each others' instruments, altering those instruments so drastically as to be unrecognizable, and generally splashing their sonic colors into the most unexpected combinations.