As the music industry transitioned from vinyl records
and cassette tapes to CDs as the dominant format, a curious phenomenon began to
happen. As CDs could hold around 80 minutes of music, record companies began to
think that they needed to fill up all that space. Did they think consumers
equated volume with value? Did they think people wanted 50ish minutes of music
chosen by the artist followed by mostly superfluous, DVD bonus feature-esque remixes/outtakes/demos/live
versions? I’m speculating as to their motives but it’s hard to look back and
miss that average album lengths began to spike in the 90s. After all, some “double
albums” from the 60s fit onto one CD, while “double albums” from this era
absolutely had to fit on two CDs. Luckily we’ve seen the reversal of this
trend, with more modern albums like The Flaming Lips’ Embryonic released as a double album for pacing and artistic
reasons instead of because they’re too long to fit onto one CD.
This brings me to OCS
4: Get Stoved. Recorded at the same time as Songs About Death & Dying Vol. 3 and initially released with it
as a two CD set, both albums are hardly above a half hour in length. They could easily fit onto one CD, so one
must assume they were separated for good reason. If you listen to both of them
back-to-back, though, you’d be forgiven for not knowing where one ends and the
other begins. Is John Dwyer just being arbitrary and trying to make you think
you’re getting a great deal?
Listening to them in isolation makes a huge
difference. True, the distinctions may not be as clear cut as they are between,
say, Castlemania and Smote Reverser, but I do understand why
they’re given their own space to exist. Songs
About Death & Dying Vol. 3 is overall more somber in tone, with darker
subject matter. There’s more rough edges to brush up against. Meanwhile, OCS4: Get Stoved feels more calm and
reflective, lacking any bursts of noise or experimental elements that made
earlier albums bittersweet. It’s also the most consistent album so far—yes, the
third album has greater peaks but it’s not as enjoyable all the way through. Overall
I’d characterize album four as shambolic and druggy, tracks like ‘Crime On My
Mind’ and ‘Tower & The Wall’ stumbling down the sidewalk stoned on a sunny
California day. On a side note, I tried figuring out what “stoved” means, and between
normal dictionaries and Urban Dictionary it has some interesting usages. My
personal favorite is “being so stoned you feel sober.”
Released in the Summer of 2005, OCS 4: Get Stoved represents the end of the OCS name (until it was
revived in 2017, but that’s a tale for another time!). This same year, John
Dwyer’s main musical project, The Coachwhips, also came to an end. Perhaps to
signal his new full-time dedication, OCS transformed into a series of sound
alike name variants. And while the next album, The Cool Death Of Island Raiders, wasn’t a huge departure from what
had come before, it’s still worth noting that Get Stoved is the last recorded as a duo primarily featuring
acoustic guitars. Island Raiders may
have a 5 on its cover but it’s definitely not the logical fifth album
progression that this suggests.
After four albums that fully explored and finessed the
OCS sound, it was time to go somewhere new. It was time for Brigid Dawson to
join. It was time to sound like a full band. It was time to use electric
guitars and delay pedals. It was time for OCS to evolve into Thee Oh Sees.
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