Send "Thee Oh Sees " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Propulsive, careening, and at times, openly dangerous, Thee Oh Sees are like the house band for a runaway train. Much of their appeal comes from the fact that they're a machine with four equal parts: the wide-eyed, cult-leader charisma of frontman John Dwyer, the effortless cool of keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, the pulsating low end of Petey Dammit, and the steel-solid rhythmic anchor of Mike Shoun. With unspeakable chemistry and an instinctual bond that borders on telepathic, the band has taken its wildly cacophonous and setlist-free live show to must-see status, turning music venues populated by arm-folding spectators into anarchic riot scenes. An Oh Sees show is a place where combing the floor for your shoes when the house lights come on becomes ritualistic, where getting kicked in the face by a renegade crowd-surfer provokes a shit-eating grin instead of a scowl. Most of the band's best albums serve as recorded documents of their live sets; you can practically hear Dwyer swallowing microphones and spitting upwards to the rafters.Castlemania-- Thee Oh Sees' first record of 2011-- made it easier to remember that the band started out as Dwyer's solo project, a vehicle forged as a left turn from the eardrum terrorism of his garage-punk cult heroes Coachwhips. Rife with kaleidoscopic woodwind arrangements and vocals akin to the green cartoon monsters that grace the cover art of many Oh Sees full-lengths, the record was a refreshingly weird slab of hallucinogenic psych-pop, a headphones record for the arty garage-rock über-faithful. (You know, the kind of people who own more than two volumes of Back From the Grave or take a road trip to Gonerfest every single year.)...full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| To call John Dwyer prolific is a bit like calling The Beatles “like the best band ever.” It’s been said before. But regardless of the statement’s lack of originality, it isn’t any less accurate or fitting. The mad scientist behind Thee Oh Sees has lead his merry band of weirdos through an exhaustive amount of releases in the last 15 or so years, with the last year being particularly fruitful. Carrion Crawler/The Dream arrives just six months after the twisted garage treasure that is Castlemania, and is the band’s third full-length on In The Red since 2010’s Warm Slime. This type of mass output, which seems to be the M.O. among the San Francisco scene (see Ty Segall and The Fresh & Onlys) that Dwyer is pretty much the godfather of, was not invented by Thee Oh Sees. Like Guided By Voices and even Ryan Adams, they are just of the school of thought that a musician’s job is to write, release and perform music. And if you are serious about it, this process shouldn’t only take place every one to two years. Does this mean you have to take some of the bad with the good? Of course. But with a band like Thee Oh Sees that’s half the fun. Even their lesser moments are pretty damn interesting. When Castlemania was released last May, Dwyer was already hinting at Carrion, referring to it as “maybe our best yet.” While an unconventional PR move to use the release of your current album to tout your next one, he was likely so excited because Carrion just may be the band’s finest effort to date....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| As of this moment, there are two Oh Sees in my head. With as many solid records under the Bay Area band’s belt this year, two records rather distinct in character, a case study in multiple personality disorder is perhaps the best method of exacting the nature of their group identity. That character (or caricature, in founder and bandleader John Dwyer’s lovably distorted vision) has always been a bit shifty, particularly in their formative years spent transforming from the friendliest of Dwyer’s myriad solo projects into a fearsome company of pyromaniac garage rock torchbearers with a nigh-on-legendary penchant for electrifying performances. But still, the band’s output up to this point hasn’t inspired any deep need to draw territorial lines between the masks Thee Oh Sees have been known to don; always glowing like a radioactive skull from beneath is Dwyer’s sense of macabre garage skronk. What we’ve got with the good ole-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll destruction that characterizes Carrion Crawler/The Dream, on the other hand, is a pure experiment in exacting precisely what it is that a band dynamic brings to Dwyer’s songs. The first half of 2011 saw the release of the ebullient Castlemania, a fluffed-up but unhinged collection of cracked pop deconstructions. It was Dwyer returning to his solo roots, recording almost all of the material himself minus a few additions by lurking crew members. Castlemania felt like Dwyer’s fantasy kitchen sink record, a little bit of everything he’d been previously lauded for pushed against the speakers like neon paint in a plastic bag, overstuffed with surprisingly poppy arrangements. He proved he still had plenty of outlandish hats to show off when spelunking through what must be the most terrifying toy chest on Earth. It kept pace with the absolute best of the band’s library: Dwyer rolled out some of his most engaging songs mining an anything-goes instrumental sensibility that played almost decidedly against the typical form of his ensemble incarnation. Was Castlemania a statement of new intent, or just another day at the office that found Dwyer casually cooking the books all by his lonesome? Dwyer seems almost to be making a point of demonstrating the unique aspects of both the band’s modes, and even made it clear in the immediate wake of Castlemania that he and the crew had already made solid plans for a full-band recording later in the year. So here’s where Carrion Crawler/The Dream, Thee Oh Sees’ eighth LP in five years, steps in. Here’s where it clears the air and reminds me that when in Dwyer’s realm, it pays to do as Dwyer does: by not taking things too seriously. Within the predictable bounds of Thee Oh Sees’ style over the years, Carrion Crawler couldn’t be more distinct from its predecessor. Where Castlemania soundtracked Dwyer cleaning out the garage to fuel a tripped-out Saturday morning adventure, Carrion Crawler is almost entirely stripped of sounds and dynamics that could be considered extraneous or personally experimental, the ramshackle stomp of old taking center stage and paring down to an aerodynamic state simply through the friction of constant acceleration. The band’s deserved confidence in plumbing typical garage ground has always been sidled by a playfulness, even wackiness, but Carrion Crawler is invested wholly in the business of bombast. These songs win out not through their charming surprises, but through an uncompromising gracility which allows them to propel their unified weight in a sort of hitherto unrivaled ferocity....full text |
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