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What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Thee Oh
Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a
guitar-chewing, speaker-smothering, tongue-wagging John Dwyer careening
across your cranium, chased by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives
every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what you thought
it meant to make 21st century rock ’n’ roll?
Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point—how
impossible Thee Oh Sees have been been to pin down since Dwyer launched
it in the late ‘90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground
bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. (While Dwyer often records
songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a four-piece featuring
keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, and drummer
Mike Shoun)
That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, 13-minute
title track of 2010’s Warm Smile LP to the mercurial moods of 2008’s
The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. And then there’s the
Bay Area band’s recent track record, including a scrappy tour split
with Total Control, the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania and the
high wire hooks of Carrion Crawler/The Dream, which dropped a second
drum set among sunburnt organs, dovetailing guitars and rail-jumping
rhythms.
Blast any of the above and it’s hard not to see the psych-steeped
parallels between Dwyer’s manic music and his canvas-splattering
artwork, which looks like it was torn from a shelf of twisted
underground comics. Colorful and confounding in a way that’s more than
welcome, then. In fact, it’s downright refreshing, like a slap in the
face at 5 in the morning. Of if you prefer a slightly more subtle
musical awakening, there’s always Putrifiers, the latest in a long line
of Oh Sees LPs that expands the group’s sound well past your friendly
neighborhood garage band. So while the space odyssey nods of “Wax Face”
actually sound like they’re meant to melt your ears straight off, the
record’s full of deviant detours, from the poison-tipped string parts
and Eno-esque engineering of “So Nice” to the groove-locked Krautrock
inclinations of “Lupine Dominus.”
The most noticeable element may be Dwyer’s melodies, however, as they
reveal a softer side to his songwriting, one that makes perfect sense
considering just how disparate his dust-clearing influences are. Scott
Walker, the Velvet Underground, The Zombies and the experimental
Japanese act Les Rallizes Denudes are but a small taste of what
informed Thee Oh Sees this time around, as Dwyer returned to the
multi-instrumental ways of Castlemania—full band sessions for another
record are already underway—and rounded out a fuller, drier sound with
drummer/engineer Chris Woodhouse and such special guests as Mikal
Cronin (sax), Heidi Maureen Alexander (trumpet, vocals) and K Dylan
Edrich (viola).
Which leaves one question: are The Oh Sees going to bring it down a notch live now as well?
“I
will still strike an audience in the brain,” Dwyer assures us all,
although he admits, “Maybe every now and then it would be okay if we
relaxed a little.”
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