Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier has announced his debut solo album. It’s called We Sang, Therefore We Were, and it comes out on April 26 via Joyful Noise. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘Grow Like a Plant’. Check it out below and scroll down for the album’s cover art and tracklist.
“When Satomi, Ed, John and I were chatting between shows in Austin in early December, they encouraged me to make a record on my own, as a way to cope with the restlessness I’ve been feeling,” Saunier shared in a statement. “It came together quick. Intrigued by the announcement that the new Rolling Stones record was going to sound ‘angry,’ I thought, ‘Good, I’m angry too.’ But when Hackney Diamonds turned out more like cotton candy than punk rock, I ironically went back to Nirvana: not just the clever melodies over massive distortion, but also that dark Cobain sarcasm which still resonates in this age of phony blue-check-washing of fascism.”
‘Grow Like a Plant’ is indebted to Captain Beefheart’s ‘Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish’, Sauner explained. “This song addresses that annoying quirk of the homosapien mind where it thinks it’s made of higher quality molecules than the rest of the universe. For millennia civilizations managed to temper this suicidal arrogance with ritual. Until 500 years ago, when a handful of self-appointed experts invented The Enlightenment, proposing that men can solve any problem given enough brooding and/or physical violence; that the cosmos is actually nothing but an inert blob of matter for us to buy and sell. What if this is all wrong? What if it’s humans who are really the mindless instinct-machines, competing for territory, food, and mates, and it’s the plant and animal kingdoms that secretly know how to think and have fun?”
Deerhoof’s most recent album was last year’s Miracle-Level. Read our inspirations interview with Deerhoof about the LP.
We Sang, Therefore We Were Cover Artwork:
We Sang, Therefore We Were Tracklist:
1. There Were Rebels
2. Front-load the Fun
3. Yeah You, Person
4. Don’t Design Yourself This Way
5. Furrowed Sugarloaf
6. Rip the Atmosphere from the Wind
7. Grow Like a Plant
8. No One Displayed the Vigor Necessary to Avert Disaster’s Approach
9. Blame Yourself
10. Instead of Queen
11. Not for Mating, Not for Pleasure, Not for Territory
12. Playing Tunes of Victory on the Instruments of Our Defeat