Carrion Crawler/The Dream

Description

Whats the first thing you think of when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, melody-maiming John Dwyer careening across your cranium, rounded out by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like its 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 pointhow impossible Thee Oh Sees have been to pin down since Dwyer launched the project in the late 90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. (While Dwyer still records songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a five-piece featuring keyboardist / singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun and multi-instrumentalist / singer Lars Finberg.) That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010s Warm Slime LP to the mercurial moods of 2008s The Masters Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. Now, Thee Oh Sees chase the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania with the scrappy, high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / The Dream. Originally envisioned as two EPs, it was cut live to tape in less than a week at Chris Woodhouses Sacramento studio in June, reflecting the battering-ram bent of the bands live show better than any bootleg ever could. As Im sure most would agree, explains Dwyer, Castlemania was more of a vocal tirade. This ones meant to pummel and throb. That it does, whether one blasts the slow, speaker-bruising build of The Dream, the sunburnt organs and dovetailing guitars of Crack in Your Eye or the interstellar instrumental Chem-Farmer, a perfect example of what happens when one takes a well-oiled machinea gang of rabid road warriors, reallyand adds a second, groove-locked drum set to the mix. To listen is to realize that Dwyers music is as manic as the underground comic inclinations of his artwork; colorful and confusing in a way thats more than welcome. Its downright refreshing, like a slap in the face at 5:00 in the morning. Or, as Dwyer puts it, You have to leave a mark somehow.