“If one were to connect a lot of sentimentality to dividing up groups of one-hundred into fours, and to have this kind of romance about arithmetic, then I would say we have reached some kind of milestone.”
- Greg Saunier
The perennially beloved and wonderfully indefinable art-pop explorers Deerhoof are turning 25 this year. To celebrate the occasion, the three labels most closely associated with Deerhoof’s career (Kill Rock Stars, Polyvinyl, Joyful Noise) are partnering together to release newly remastered versions of their first three CDs on vinyl for the first time. In addition to Holdypaws (Kill Rock Stars) and Halfbird (Joyful Noise), Polyvinyl is honored to present The Man, The King, The Girl – the band's debut full-length, re-mastered by drummer Greg Saunier and featuring fully restored cover art (the corners on the original CD release were chopped off due to a printer error). All three albums (bundle) are available for pre-order now ahead of their November 22nd release date.

“I think these three albums are Deerhoof's most raw and real. We had all these fantasies about what we wanted to do musically and we were struggling to meet them. But I feel like the labels and people we worked with believed in our weird fantasy. I still believe in that fantasy and after 25 years I still like these albums. I hope people will enjoy too.” - Satomi Matsuzaki

While today Deerhoof are universally praised for their significant contributions to 21st Century rock and roll, in 1994 they were just beginning to develop the sound that would later inspire Pitchfork to label them ”the best band in the world.”
“Like a lot of bands and projects, it's pretty hard to pin down exactly when the anniversary would be,” says Deerhoof drummer and co-founder Greg Saunier. According to Saunier, Deerhoof started as the solo recording project of bassist Rob Fisk. “The first ever Deerhoof thing was a run of five cassettes Rob made. Bass and harmonica, with fallen leaf fragments glued to the outside.”
With the addition of Satomi Matsuzaki as vocalist, Deerhoof quickly outgrew their roots in San Francisco’s noise scene. While Deerhoof retained the unrestrained creative freedom of the noise genre, they embraced the structured songcraft of pop music. “Deerhoof sort-of picked up right when Nirvana ended and we felt like a grunge band or a rock band,” Saunier shares. “We never fit well in the noise scene. We'd come out and have melodies, and it would go to a chorus, and we'd have cute lyrics about animals and flowers and stuff. But the reality is we didn't fit well on any kind of pop bill either, our music was too chaotic.”

Deerhoof’s strikingly individual sound may have been an impediment during the group’s early years, but it would soon propel the band to international notoriety.

THE MAN, THE KING, THE GIRL – 1997
Although Deerhoof had already released a handful of vinyl and cassette oddities, The Man, the King, the Girl is officially acknowledged as the group’s debut album. The recording features the early Deerhoof core unit of Rob Fisk on bass and guitar, Greg Saunier on drums, and Satomi Matsuzaki on vocals. It saw Deerhoof consciously moving away from their improvisatory noise music roots. “So much of our music was in the moment,” Saunier shares. “But we had songs, and we thought of them as pop songs. We were trying to make things that were really catchy. We weren't trying to make it lo-fi. We were trying to make it hi-fi. We were trying to make it sound powerful. We'd listen through and try to pick the best moments, and what we thought were the catchiest moments, and the most hi-fi moments. That's how we put together the first CD.” For Satomi Matsuzaki the album remains a highpoint in the band’s discography. “It's one of my favorite Deerhoof albums. It's chaotic, but it sounds so real, and our characters are so out there.”
HOLDYPAWS – 1999
During the recording of Holdypaws, Saunier thought he’d discovered a foolproof formula for high-fidelity pop perfection, but things didn’t turn out as planned. “Our friend Bob got a computer,” Saunier recalls. “Bob had an early version of Pro Tools. You know, it's very widespread now and everybody has GarageBand, or Ableton, or whatever — but this was an early model. Bob agreed to allow Deerhoof to come to his basement and try to record Holdypaws. Unfortunately for Bob, the Holdypaws sessions were anything but spontaneous as Saunier obsessed over every aspect of the recording process. “In our minds we wanted to record at his place because we thought we'd finally found the magic bullet of high-fidelity sound. So we came in there with the most nit-picky attitude. We wanted to make a clear, perfectly-sounding, and perfectly-performed indie rock pop record.” Holdypaws remains a fascinating gem in the Deerhoof catalog. “I’ve always felt the charm of the record was in its failed attempt to be a perfectly recorded mainstream rock record” Saunier adds. “I don't know what we thought, maybe that it would sound like Sheryl Crow or something? [laughs] But it so did not turn out like that.”
HALFBIRD – 2001
“Actually Halfbird was going to be our second album,” Saunier says. “The reason Halfbird came out as our third album instead of our second is because it took four years of tinkering on the four-track to get it ready for release.” Halfbird represents the apex of Deerhoof’s struggle to pull hi-fi sound out of lo-fi gear. “Two of the three LPs that are being reissued now were recorded on the same broken Tascam four-track cassette machine,” Saunier shares. “It was so much trouble to even get it to record a sound. It would keep switching off because the power thing was broken and the inputs didn't work.” So Halfbird would spend several years mired in post-production limbo. “We gave up on it so many times, and then came back to it thinking maybe it could work,” Saunier says. “I’ll never get those years back that I spent on that Tascam,” Saunier laughs. “I was literally starting to experience sanity issues from obsessing over that tape machine.”
“A new phase of the band was about to start,” Saunier reflects. Deerhoof’s next album Reveille would receive remarkable critical acclaim, being included in 2002-best-of lists published by Pitchfork and the New York Times. Deerhoof were on their way to indie rock glory and fame. “Like anybody's life, so much of Deerhoof’s story has been built around accidents and coincidences,” Saunier shares. “Everything just kept falling into place in a way that allowed us to get things done.”