Oh Sees Retrospective #16: Floating Coffin

It's always a little strange when something obscure you hold near and dear to your heart bumps up against the mainstream. I'll never forget back in 2000 when Radiohead (a popular band, to be sure, but not as legendary as they are now) appeared on Saturday Night Live. I was nervous as shit to see the reaction of my high school peers. Would everybody suddenly jump on the bandwagon, and as a result, steer the band further into the mainstream, perhaps even dragging them there, kicking and screaming? Turns out I shouldn't have worried because nobody was talking about it. I bring this up because in some sense, 2013 was the peak of mainstream crossover for Oh Sees. 'Tidal Wave' was used in 2011 in an episode of Breaking Bad; 'The Dream' was used in Grand Theft Auto V in 2013. More and more mainstream press started to cover them and review their records. I'll admit, I was a bit worried they might steer into more poppy/populist music. I needn't have worried, just as with Radiohead. Floating Coffin may have come out at the height of their mainstream dalliance but it's an Oh Sees record through and through.

That said, I don't think anyone could deny this era was where Oh Sees started to become a band that you might see on a late night talk show. I have the sense that the 2011-2013 era was the real jump in fandom numbers for Oh Sees. A lot of people seem to say either Carrion Crawler/The Dream or Floating Coffin is the first Oh Sees album they heard; even more people view them both as cornerstones of the Oh Sees discography. It's interesting, then, that Floating Coffin is the last gasp of the classic mid-era of Oh Sees (this is with the exception of the Moon Sick EP and Singles Collection Vol. 3) as the four-piece of John Dwyer, Brigid Dawson, Petey Dammit!, and Mike Shoun. People were just coming on board as Dwyer pivoted the band into another effectively-solo album, Drop, announced a hiatus, and then came roaring back with a new lineup and album. But we'll get to all that in good time, my friends. I should note that Lars Finberg did contribute drums and guitar to this record, helping achieve its beefy sound, but he didn't tour to promote the album and never officially joined as a member.


Floating Coffin was released on April 16^th, 2013, and thankfully, there's no confusing mentions of it being an EP unlike the last two albums. Ironic, then, that a mere three days after Floating Coffin came out, the band released the four leftover songs from the recording sessions as the Moon Sick EP for Record Story Day. But I digress. Setting aside its reputation for quality, Floating Coffin seems to also have a reputation for being a heavier, more energetic, and darker album than what had come before. Sure, it is more focused than the scattershot Putrifiers II, though I do think this “ALL HIGH ENERGY ALL THE TIME LET'S ROCK!” idea is a bit overblown. Don't get me wrong, side one of the record especially goes for the throat and never lets off the gas even if it's not always going a thousand miles an hour. Listen a little more closely, however, and you'll see hints of the psychedelic and prog rock styles that dominate modern Oh Sees records. The sludgy, gooey 'Night Crawler' has wonderfully zonked out sounding keyboards and a blown-out wall-of-sound that suffocates the ears. 'Strawberries 1 + 2' starts off like the rest of side one before evolving (devolving?) into a slower paced swagger. The increased psychedelic influence is also felt on the underappreciated 'No Spell', a krautrock jam that spends its last minute or so zoned out, receding into the background like the visual trails you see on acid.


It's exceedingly rare that I consider something perfect, in the literal sense of the word. Floating Coffin doesn't seem to have a weakness in its armor that can be exploited, Smaug-style, to bring it down. The album cover is cool as shit, the title is awesome, there isn't a weak song in the bunch, it's paced well and never gets stylistically monotonous...so why is it, then, that I don't find myself reaching for this record as much as other Oh Sees releases? Well, if you'll allow me a brief detour back in time: do you remember how, in the retrospective about Warm Slime, I posited that it's possible to see the flaws in something but still love it? The inverse is the case for Floating Coffin. I think it's as flawless as any work of art can be; it knows exactly what it is, what it's trying to go for, and it completely succeeds. Yet, I don't love it. It's a fantastic record and believe me, I get why other people adore it and adorn it with high regard. It's taken me so long to write this retrospective not because I haven't felt like writing recently, but because I've been trying to tease out why it is that it doesn't click with me...and I still have no idea. I was going to say that I don't think 'Minotaur' really fits the album and is an odd choice for the closer yet the more I listened to this record the more it grew on me.


You can't tell, but I shrugged just now.


I suppose that's how it goes with art sometimes, and with life, too. Some things will always be inexplicable. I've never been able to explain why I don't love Inception, other than “it's not as deep and complex as people say it is”, but that's more about other people's feelings than my own, and has no bearing on how I feel about the movie. It simply didn't capture my heart the way it seems to for other people. So it goes with Floating Coffin. If you're one of its many lovers, I wish you both the happiest life together.