In indie circles it’s a rare feat when a band that hasn’t even omitted a note in four years packs out a venue. So meet a band that’s just as rare. A band from a country famed only for guzzling mussels and chocolate washed down by beers capable of incapacitating elephants. A band that could fuse the inscrutably surreal with the frenzied and still managed to squeeze it all into a pop structure that was the perfect size for hugging. What other band would of thought of putting cat cries of “Rita Heyworth!” and “Going out to steal a ruby!” in the same phrase and force it to make some kind of slanted sense. This is Salvador Dali with a plectrum or more commonly know, Deus.
It’s hard to believe that ten years ago ‘Suds and Soda’ dented the charts. Long gone seems the era when the record buying public purchased material of such audacious eccentricity. Furthermore it’s equally hard to believe that the song in question is that old. Take note ‘experimentalists’, they may be offering seminars some time soon.
Barman and Klaas are eager to shift the cobwebs. They’re the only original members, but shoes have been filled more than adequately by fresh legs. Back up vocal and guitar duties rest in the solid hands of ex-Evil Superstar Mauro Pawlowski and not surprisingly, it’s a worthy appointment. Like all great comeback gigs, there’s a balanced mix of the celebrated old as well as the brand new. New material seems to travel in the same direction as ‘Ideal Crash’ did; calmer and straighter but unmistakably Deus. While not initially memorable there seems no shortage of inspiration and plenty of plausible solid goodness. Inertia is never something that Deus could bear to suffer.
So we pinch ourselves as they eject ‘Little Arithmetics’, ‘Worse Case Scenario’, ‘Instant Street’ and various other classics with kind of enthusiasm that would suggest that we’d forgotten about them. But how could we?
