Damn, didn’t think it would take me this loooooooooooooooooooong to get a review of Thee Oh Sees‘ performance at Larimer Lounge done, but the weekend drifted by and BAM, I realized I hadn’t even started yet.
Fuck it. Thee Oh Sees are Thee Oh Sees; they rock, they rip, they roll, they trip, they tock, they tick, they bomb, they blip and … best of all … they take the mic into their mouths like a cock and scream bloody murder.
Or at least frontman John Dwyer does; his singing partner Ms. Dawson is a more mannered performer, relying less on theatrics and more on the heavenly lilt of her voice to get the job done. She’s the perfect foil for Dwyer’s totally man-made aggression-slash-whimsy-slash-persona, and a big reason Dwyer is getting more ink with Thee Oh Sees than he ever got with Coachwhips, Pink & Brown, Yikes or Landed and even Sic Alps.
They’re all great bands though; that’s the beauty of it. What’s more, Thee Oh Sees is a combination of all those great bands. You can hear the post-rock-a-billy chug, the effects-laden dissonance, the revved-up garage-rock and all the rest within the folds of Oh Sees’ simple-but-sublime songs.
In concert, some of the songs take on new life as vicious head-bangers, while others play out pretty much the same. It’s a thing of beauty to hear the Oh Sees discography unfold before your very ears, tunes from Thee Master’s Bedroom, Cool Death Of and Sucks Blood coalescing together to form a giant trident, with which you will inevitably be jabbed.
It was a relief to watch Oh Sees to a great service to their discography, making the whole thing Real. Now how about throwing in some of that delicious NOISE from the first few OCS albums?
Stay tuned for reviews of Dwyer’s latest Yikes album, a Fresh & Onlys (“Bomb Wombs”) cassette and Inspector 22, a great new band on Odessa Records.
