There's a scene in The Rotters' Club, Jonathan Coe's warm and funny novel of growing up in '70s Birmingham, England, where a character attentively works on a review of Yes' album Tales from Topographic Oceans for the school magazine. He concludes that "...if someone was to ask me who this album was by, and whether or not it was a masterpiece, I would be able to give the same answer: YES!!" Since those no-nonsense, beard-stroking times, TFTO—a four-song record, where the shortest "tune" was over 18 minutes long—has become a symbol of what went wrong. A corrective was needed and, luckily, it happened. Never again were we to venture onto those shores, and to dip our toes into those same oceans that Yes once did. We had learned our lesson.

But then, of course we really hadn't learned our lesson.

In the past couple of years, the word denoting '70s rock at its most bloated and "artistic"—prog—has snuck back into conversations, no longer said through gritted teeth and a sneer. Its resurgence has allowed Stephen Malkmus to write 10-minute long guitar solos, the Fiery Furnaces to cut up multiple live performances to create one song, and silly hippies like Brooklyn's Yeasayer to gain some small amount of success. Deerhoof's no-wave art-rock could be seen as a progenitor to this movement, with its odd time signatures, willingness to change the direction of a song multiple times, and the band's occasional free-form experimental nature.

But Offend Maggie, like last year's Friend Opportunity, shows that Deerhoof has learned a lot from the lessons of the past. They're keeping the songs short this time (the longest is just under six minutes), and relying more on their skewed-pop leanings. The record leads with a few of its best tracks: the muscular riffs of "The Tears and the Music of Love," the clockwork groove of "Chandelier Search," and the bass-led "Buck and Judy." The title track is a great example of the overall sound (if it was ever possible to pigeonhole Deerhoof into one sound), quickly plucked acoustic guitars give way to Pete Townshend-like rough electric strums, then the entire song picks up the pace halfway through, moving into something like Richard Thompson's electric folk with male and female harmonies. And all of this in two minutes.

Offend Maggie is nothing if not a percussive album. Singer Satomi Matsuzaki coos her mysterious lyrics (occasionally in Japanese) over drums that sound like they're being hit by baseball bats, but don't forget that drums are supposed to swing. And while the record loses its footing toward the end (regaining the momentum with the sprawling dream-pop of "Jagged Fruit"), Deerhoof, even at their least successful, are always looking forward and are always interesting. So if someone was to ask whether the album worked and whether Deerhoof had escaped from the dreaded prog, I would be able to give the same answer: Yes.