***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. “For years, DEERHOOF was the only band that sounded like Deerhoof. Deerhoof’s neck-snapping syncopations, classical melody, minimal gear and maximal music has slowly become part of the vocabulary: St. Vincent, Flaming Lips, Tune-Yards and Dirty Projectors are just a few of the bands to have absorbed some Deerhoof DNA. Deerhoof banged out recordings to send to producer and Godmode Records honcho NICK SYLVESTER. No one gave much thought to microphone placement and other technical matters, or playing the parts perfectly, or even staying in tune. It was unselfconscious, spontaneous and fun, all four musicians playing in the same tiny room at the same time. “We forgot,” says GREG, “that the camera was there.” The music was ineffably evocative and powerful. In May, Sylvester recorded the vocals, and that’s where the album’s pop side comes out: SATOMI’s singing is front and center, and if it sounds like she’s commanding the band, it’s because she was. Satomi was determined to make a record that was not just for hardcore Deerhoof fans but instead would speak to everybody. But there’s a darkness to the songs. While Satomi’s voice might ring like a sweet bell, JOHN and ED’s guitars resound with uncanny, virtuosic abandon, and Greg drums with his ingenious wallop, the gnomic lyrics juxtapose images of false paradise with a sense of declining empires and decay, a foreboding portrait of an American Weimar. La Isla Bonita is the glorious sound of four musicians owning their own hard-won and richly deserved legacy. Even as western civilization goes down the tubes.”—Michael Azerrad