Kill Rock Stars
2005
The Runners Four
About This Album
After seven albums' worth of gleeful pandemonium, Deerhoof calm things down a bit with The Runners Four, a collection of songs that are even more restrained than Milk Man and the Green Cosmos EP. Perhaps trying for the unpredictability of their earlier work got too, well, predictable for the band. Even though the manic intensity that characterized work like Reveille is missed a little here, The Runners Four is still a far cry from typical indie rock; in fact, it sounds more like one of Deerhoof's older albums played at half-speed than anything else. Most importantly, the joyful creativity that radiates from all of the band's other work is here in spades, too: it's hard not to smile at "Twin Killers"' zigzagging riffs or "Scream Team"'s giddy, girl-boy vocals. At the beginning of the album, there's more of an emphasis on pretty, relatively gentle songs like "Chatterboxes," "Odyssey," and "Vivid Cheek Love Song," although even these tracks have enough shifts in tempo and dynamics to prove that they're the work of Deerhoof. However, as The Runners Four unfolds, it gets progressively louder and more overtly playful, with "Spirit Ditties of No Tone," "Lightning Rod, Run," and "O'Malley, Former Underdog" providing some of the album's most irresistible moments.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,14,15,16 and 18)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.