Serpens Alba

Let us celebrate some American exceptionalism with some Private Music.

There’s a lot of exactly what makes the USA great again and again and again in the Deftones. Hailing from Sacramento with parental roots in Mexico and China the band have channelled disparate experiences, an open-minded approach to musical genre, different artforms, real talent, a sensitivity for the underdog and sheer grit/endurance to get where they are today. Which is a vital arena filling act, hugely important to their fans, decades after that whole Nu-metal thing had been written off*.

As a hardcore long-term fan of the band** Deftones sound fascinates me. Far from all that scurvy percussive rap-jock-rock that was swirling around them when they debuted in ’95, thirty years later on Private Music they sound to me like heavily-armoured shoegaze, a melodically lush questing sound that tweaks your emotional receptors.

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All the artwork for Private Music hints at patterns, late night gloss, surface detail and over focus. The white corn snake on the cover (an albino? photo trickery?) being a case in point, you can get lost in that pattern of scales. The only earthy note at all are the stubbed out cigarillos in the sink on the back page of the booklet; my favourite image here.

The music follows suit of course.

If you come to Private Music looking for earthy hard rock fury then you’ve turned into the wrong drive. Deftones pull off that MBV trick of leaving few instruments sounding distinctly like themselves, so many of the sounds are treated, layered, filtered, blended and skewed, worked like a painter’s palette. Which can sound like so much cherry-gloss sunset blossom candy mulch if its done badly; it doesn’t here.

My fave cut on Private Music is ‘Souvenir’, it is an astonishing song about breaking barriers down between the physical and the spiritual, possibly romantic, possibly friendship, possibly impossible. One minute it is sweet and gentle, a glide over honeyed shores and the next it swoops and storms over churning waters before steepling up into a stunning coda. Limp Bizkit this ain’t.

The most straight forwardly rock moment here is the opener, ‘My Mind Is A Mountain’ which does riff harder than most. It has an interesting rhythmic structure where drummer Abe Cunningham seems to be following the song, rather than driving it as it sloughs off excess harmony, Chino Moreno barking out his vocals all the while. Then as we tip into ‘Locked Club’ the harmonic chorus tames the rougher declamatory verses as we go.

This really does not sound like anyone else out there.

Elsewhere I learned what ‘Ecdysis’ means – the shedding of skin, reptile-styley – modelled here via a great bassline courtesy of Fred Sablan and snaking guitar riffs from Stephen Carpenter. Chino Moreno gives a great soulful Iggy Pop impression at the beginning of the glitchy ‘Departing The Body’, before it all gets loud again.

Side 2 opener ‘I Think About You All The Time’ is truly rather beautiful and wistful. Its melodies sound sun-bleached, vulnerable, with guitars actually sounding like guitars. It really is a very beautiful love song, boasting subtle shades of Depeche Mode and Jane’s Addiction in here too. It contrasts nicely with the sharpness of the following ‘Milk Of The Madonna’, which boasts some great drumming.

I really enjoy ‘Cut Hands’, a heavier, hip-hop-hate which is either a pointed fuck-you to a former band member, or general railing against digitally-fuelled alienation. Take your pick, either way it made me chair dance.

I would also shout out ‘~Metal Dream’, which has a very cinematic feel to it of real nostalgia. It feels medicated in the same way as some of Spiritualized’s best cuts do, a little lost but more hopeful, never numb.

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Private Music has been a really interesting LP to spend a week with. Overall I find myself dancing between wanting it to have sharper edges, more gears, increased crunch and a certain swooning at the emotional affect of it all. I do find it a very affecting album.

This is a particularly well-produced album, this type of music has to be in order to be any good at all. The sound needs to be sharp, clear and indistinct, often simultaneously and so kudos to Nick Raskulinecz and the band for that and capturing so much warmth as well as surface in these complex grooves.

I think the next stage of my communion with Deftones will be to see them strut their stuff live, I tried recently but totally underestimated how quickly they’d sell out their gigs. It is interesting to me to see how they will put this all over to a rabid fan base.

So hail to the Deftones, maintaining their total social and artistic integrity through the perilous fight under the red rocket’s glare of broken dreams, trashed norms and unregulated self-interest. There’s a lot to fight, but so much more to fight for.

The flames are alive
Reclaim their audience
These rains are divine
Reclaim their environment
A new phase arrives    'Ecdysis'

1323 Down.

*rightly because most of it was pants, with a couple of honourable exceptions.

**having been a fan for all of about 13 months and counting after my daughter, who gave me Private Music for Christmas, got me into them.