Come See the Duck (Banano, 1998) and Holdy Paws (Kill Rock Stars, 1999), featuring new keyboardist Kelly Goode, indulged in loosely-coupled streams of guitar noise and melody, evoking a more amateurish version of Sonic Youth. The high-pitched voice of Satomi Matsuzaki whines Magic Star, whispers Lady People, indulges in the tender childish lullaby of Satan. The best instrumental moments are to be found in Queen of the Lake (frenzied drumming and hard-rock riffs), Crow (hiccupping post-rock jamming and ethereal operatic vocals), and in the demented The Great Car Tomb. The lengthy threnody of Data is a bit hard to digest. Generally speaking, Deerhoof harken back to the North Carolina movement of Polvo and Superchunk, and seems unaware of Blonde Redhead.

After replacing Fisk with new guitarist John Dieterich, the trio released Halfbird (Menlo Park, 2001), a messy anthology of material recorded over the previous five years.

The more cohesive Reveille (Kill Rock Stars, 2002) wed garage-rock and prog-rock, and a Dadaistic stance, while still indulging in the experimental textures of the first album. The general tone is one of depraved mockery, not unlike early Royal Trux: they invest the Chuck Berry-ian rock'n'roll Holy Night Fever, the childish singalong The Eyebright Bugler, the demented organ sonata All Rise with a sense of low self-esteem. These unorthodox takes on the tradition peak with Hark the Umpire, that sounds like an irreverent parody of garage-rock. Musically, the best results are achieved by a group of songs that, whether deliberately or not, echo the anthemic guitar noise of the Who, each further decorated with disorienting wordless vocals: This Magnificent Bird Will Rise, Our Angel's Ululu and Frenzied Handsome Hello. The four-minute abstract chaotic soundpainting of Days & Nights in the Forest represents the one moment when they abandon any pretense of sticking to the song format. Most of the 16 tracks are very brief, and this is their obvious limit. They basically get serious only once, with the eight-minute The Last Trumpeter Swan, a half-hearted try at replicating the mathematical song structures of Can. Their art of the musical nonsense is often engaging but also a bit aimless.

The brief concept album Apple O' (Kill Rock Stars, 2003) redefined their mission as a deconstruction of the rock song in a vein related to Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Dummy Discards a Heart does have a melodic refrain, although the guitar tries to sabotage it with a quirky counterpoint. One can "feel" the catchy song hiding behind L'Amour Stories but not quite hear it because of the way guitar and bass do "not" play what one expects them to play. Panda Panda Panda merely repeats a senseless pattern until the riff picks up, and it's a riff that could (could) propel a powerful song. Apple Bomb sounds like the parody of a pop ballad until it explodes in a guitar freak-out. The closer, Blue Crash, is the one song that approaches the mainstream. The weakest link is now the vocalist, whose high-pitched voice is, at best, an acquired taste. Deerhoof was becoming less noise and more structure, but the band triumphed precisely in the pieces that denied the whole project, like the miniature instrumental jam of My Diamond Star Car and especially the surreal Sealed With A Kiss.

Unfortunately, Milk Man (Kill Rock Stars, 2004) continued Deerhoof's slide towards friendlier sounds in a rather pedestrian manner, as in the catchy (and unusually long) Milk Man and the eerily evanescent Giga Dance. The elettronic quasi-bossanova Desaparecere (vaguely reminiscent of Supertramp), and C, a highly-refined post-rock architecture, which had already been released as a single, displayed remnants of their harmonic genius, as did eccentric lullabies (Song of Sorn, That Big Orange Sun Run Over Speed Light), futuristic novelties (Dog in the Sidewalk) and insane instrumentals (Rainbow Silhouette of the Milky Rain), but, even in its best moments, the band came through as a post-rock version of Brainiac, plus Satomi Matsuzaki's falsetto. To their credit, one must recognize that they are perfecting an art of making the difficult easy, which is, after all, a sign of classicism.

Nervous Cop (5 Rue Christine, 2004) is a project fronted by Newsom with two drummers (Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and Hella's Zach Hill) and some electronics (Deerhoof's John Dieterich). Except for Setting The Bushes On Fire and a few other rational moments, the sound is a nightmarish evocation of the nuclear holocaust, a worthy soundtrack of an apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

The EP Green Cosmos (Toad, 2005) collects seven short tracks, including a shortened version of the single Come See The Duck.

The Runners Four (Kill Rock Stars, 2005), recorded by a quartet with Saunief, Matsuzaki, and guitarists John Dietrich and Chris Cohen, and mostly composed by Cohen, is their most straightforward poppy effort. Unfortunately the few tunes that deserve to be heard in an age awash in pop tunes (Running Thoughts, Spirit Ditties of No Tone, Siriustar) are drowned in a sea of filler. This should have been an EP.

After Cohen left the band, the Deerhoof released Friend Opportunity (Kill Rock Stars, 2007), that is mostly a pop album with no avantgarde pretenses, although a very elegant one. It features two of their most straightforward compositions, Matchbook Seeks Maniac and +81, and a parade of simple refrains over simple riffs dedicated to simple stories (although sometimes not as simple as they appear to be, the mutating Perfect Me being a good example of deceiving innocence). Maybe Deerhoof realized that they had reached the end of the tunnel and decided to capitalize on their experiments. Whatever the reason for the sharp creative turn, the result is an impressive achievement in the realm of pop music, something comparable with what XTC did in the 1980s out of the pretenses of the new wave. Look Away, a 12-minute collage of random sounds, ends the album on an intimidating note, as if to warn that the band's experimental ambitions are not dead yet.

Curtains was the project of guitarist Chris Cohen before Deerhoof. After Fast Talks (2001), Cohen reformed the trio with keyboardist Greg Saunier and drummer Andrew Maxwel to record the collection of mostly instrumental melodic vignettes Flybys (2003) and the more vocal (and less inspired) Vehicles of Travel (2004). Cohen (who now played several instruments) had to find two new collaborators (guitarist Nedelle Torrisi and keyboardist Annie Lewandowski) for Calamity (2006).

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