Normal is never coming back. Whether by a collective dismantling or sheer collapse, our old illusions are being hollowed out. Over the past couple of years, Deerhoof has been asking themselves if there was any music they could create that expressed how the rapidly changing future might actually feel. The finished product, Future Teenage Cave Artists, finds Deerhoof in a revolutionary mood, but also haunted by memories of a lost world and every failed attempt to save it. People already cut loose from the system, already surviving with new ways of life – these hopeful heroes are Deerhoof's inspiration. These are the Future Teenage Cave Artists.

Faithful listeners will recognize a certain alienated but transformational figure who shows up in Deerhoof songs going back to their earliest days. Take the narrator of "The Perfect Me" from 2007's Friend Opportunity: an orphaned but eager soul attempting to entice other wounded wanderers who might lack a home, a clan, a family, a history. But on Future Teenage Cave Artists our protagonist is threatened by terror lurking around every corner. Add to that the fact that our "cast-off queen," our "maniac," our "terrible daughter" are watching themselves get orphaned in real time by an older generation in power that would rather see life on Earth destroyed than give up archaic systems of capital.

Like a lot of the inimitable music they have released over the last quarter-century, the Deerhoof of Future Teenage Cave Artists (Satomi Matsuzaki on bass and vocals, Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich on guitars, and Greg Saunier on drums, vocals and piano) stitches together fragments of R&B and classic rock and transforms them into a new language of revolution, forgoing verse-chorus structures for dream logic and blind intuition. But what makes this album different is its intimacy – the blues riffs and slide guitars are joined by soft, rickety pianos and whispered three-part harmonies. In this sense, FTCA inverts the formula of Deerhoof's last album, Mountain Moves, which invited a wide community of collaborators to band together in an open celebration of solidarity.

The new one is borne of self-isolation and deprivation. It's the sound of a sparkling, manic musical intelligence being disconnected from a nourishing public and devouring itself inside its own cocoon: a desperate lunge at metamorphosis. At times FTCA indeed sounds as if the band has retreated to the caves, recording with unreliable electricity and insecure food supplies. Guitar pedals malfunction mid-take, reverbs chop off mid-tail, drum fills collapse mid-phrase. Some musical moments, as gorgeous and touching as anything Deerhoof has ever written, stop short for no apparent reason, giving way to queasy smudges of sound. Many of the instruments and voices were recorded with nothing more than the built-in mic of a laptop. Harsh splices make no effort to hide the seams. Hard panning leaves many of these imperfections weirdly naked in the mix.

In this way FTCA joins a storied lineage of pop records that expose the insular and reclusive nature of recording itself. Like Let It Be, There's a Riot Goin' On, or Sister Lovers, this record is its own "making-of." Absence is a central character in the drama. For every heartwarming melody or pile-up of parade drums or shard of loopy guitar noise, there is musical acknowledgement of the toll that a constant threat of cataclysm takes on mental health. This is a sonic and lyric funeral for a way of life that is never coming back – an afterparty, back when the doomsday clock hit midnight. There are raucous toasts to the departed in high style, as sassy and spasmodic as anything they've done – see Side A; there are moments of profound sadness, maximally small, descending into madness, shrieking with loss – see Side B. All funerals remind us that life goes on, somehow.

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New Releases for the week of June 19, 2020

The Chisel: Deconstructive Surgery 7"

Various: THPS OST 12" (blue vinyl pressing)

Rudimentary Peni: Wilfred Owen the Chances 7"

Lady Gaga: Chromatica 12"

The National: High Violet (expanded edition; purple and clear marble vinyl)

Cro-Mags: In the Beginning 12"

Neil Young: Homegrown 12"

King Diamond: The Eye 12"

Deerhoof: Future Teenage Cave Artists 12"

Erik Nervous: Will You Be Alive In 1985? cassette (SSR exclusive mixtape!)

Havok: V 12"

Stiff Richards: Dig 12"