In 1996, Nick Cave released Murder Ballads, an album of, well, murder ballads. These
traditional and original songs detail, often in first person narrative, crimes
of passion or outright murder. Though misconstrued as glorifying such acts,
their purpose is usually more to examine how such things happen, the
consequences of them, and how to avoid them. Cave’s album culminates in its
penultimate track, a 14 minute epic about an unnamed narrator committing a mass
killing at a bar in a town he’s lived in all his life. Murder Ballads is a deranged masterpiece, as darkly seductive as a
serial killer documentary. I can’t say whether John Dwyer has ever heard this
album, but given the title and subject matter of the third OCS album, it’s a
safe bet he’s at least familiar with the song form.
Before we get to the music, let’s do a little history
and background. Though it’s unclear exactly when Patrick Mullins joined OCS,
the group began to be billed as a duo—not just a solo project with
collaborators—with the paired release of their third and fourth albums. As with
previous OCS albums, the official titles and release dates are impossible to
pin down. According to Narnack Records, it was April 5th, 2005,
while Discogs lists May 5th…and Wikipedia says May 30th.
Upon its initial release as a two CD set, the title was simply 3 & 4, with the albums subtitled Songs About Death & Dying Vol. 3 and
Get Stoved (or possibly Get, Stoved). Today, you’ll typically see
them online as separate entities using only their subtitles, with the fourth
album now pseudo-retitled to OCS 4: Get
Stoved.
Whew! Got all that? Now then…
Songs
About Death & Dying Vol. 3 is the earliest release
in which you can hear the nascent OCS/Oh Sees sound begin to crystallize. While
it would be some time before the garage rock, prog, and metal elements were
mixed in, the third and fourth OCS albums feel like a refinement of the freak
folk sound they had explored up to this point. New member Patrick Mullins may or
may not deserve credit for helping Dwyer focus his approach more. I’ve often
felt like the varying members that he works with help draw different things out
of him, and Mullins brings a simultaneously solid but ramshackle style to the
table. ‘Bicycle’ and ‘Greedy Happens’ are centered around his pounding,
simplistic drumming, while his use of noisy electronic textures on ‘The Pool’
and ‘Split The Take’ come off like more reactive, less chaotic versions of
earlier OCS noise tracks.
The other big change I notice is that John Dwyer is
finally writing some genuinely memorable and affecting songs. ‘If I Had A
Reason’ and ‘Second Date’ are early career highlights, and even show up on Thee Hounds Of Foggy Notion in more
finessed forms. ‘Here I Come’, ‘I’m Coming Home’, and ‘Oh No Bloody Nose’
feature some of Dwyer’s prettiest vocals ever put on tape, alongside
accomplished acoustic guitar strumming and fingerpicking. On a side note, is it
just me, or does ‘Here I Come’ sound a bit like ‘We’re Going To Be Friends’ by
The White Stripes? Anyway…
Whereas the first two OCS albums often seemed slapdash
and carelessly put together, Songs About
Death & Dying Vol. 3 showcases a newfound maturity. For the first time
I sense a commitment to making music intended to be listened to more than once
or twice. Completionists will still want to hear it all from the beginning,
sure, but everyone else is advised to start here.
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