Unless you're someone who keenly follows the personal lives of artists you admire, you may never know why it is that certain albums seem a bit off or very different from what had come before. David Bowie fans must've been mystified when their beloved Thin White Duke of Station To Station fame turned up a year later with the artsy, at-times ambient Low. Do a bit of reading and you'll find out he had developed a hellacious cocaine addiction while living in Los Angeles, to the point he claims he remembers almost nothing about recording Station To Station. Seeking solace and new inspiration, as well as a place not riddled with peak cocaine popularity, he journeyed to Switzerland before settling in Berlin, inspired by the krautrock and experimental music and art of the time. It's always struck me that Drop isn't so different than previous Oh Sees albums but it still feels different; somehow, it just feels off. Turns out there are a number of reasons for this.
Drop was released on April 19th, 2014. As ever, there has to be a conflicting date to drive me further insane: the Oh Sees Bandcamp page says it was released on the 29th. I'm assuming that was just a typo since there are several reviews that came out just after the 19th. But I digress. The album came out at a time of great transition for the band and specifically John Dwyer. You can get the full details on the Wikipedia entry for Oh Sees, but here's the shortish version. In December of 2013, Dwyer announced during a live show “this will be the last Oh Sees show for a long time. So dig in.” After a series of rumors about a Phish-style hiatus or a full breakup, the band clarified by announcing a new record would be released in 2014, hinting at possible live shows. We would also find out that Dwyer was taking some time off to move away from his long-time home, San Francisco. To Los Angeles, in fact; unlike Bowie he doesn't seem to have coked away his memory as a result. In February 2014 Drop's release date was revealed, and that it would be another album recorded mostly solo by Dwyer, as with Castlemania and Putrifiers II. Somewhat lost in all the signal noise was that the other members of Oh Sees—Brigid Dawson, Petey Dammit!, and Mike Shoun—had left the band. Well, it's unclear if they left or if Dwyer wanted to start fresh in L.A. True, Dawson would continue to record with Oh Sees (and OCS!). However, since she never toured with the post-2013 lineups (at least as far as I know, corrections are appreciated!) I personally don't consider her a 'true' member any longer. Call it hair splitting if you will. Sometimes you gotta split some hairs, man.
In revisiting Drop for this retrospective, it became clear that I still have conflicting feelings about it. How much I can attribute these feelings to the influence of Dwyer moving to L.A., it's hard to say. Liars certainly recorded very different records when they were in Berlin vs. in L.A. Anyway, there isn't much concrete information out there about when Drop was recorded. The Wikipedia entry says something to the effect of “it was recorded in Sacramento without the other then-members of the band” but since we don't know when those members left, it could have been anytime from late 2013 to early 2014, after Dwyer had already moved. Anyway, it doesn't seem productive to slide further down that rabbithole, so let's clamber back up to the record itself. As with the other pseudo-solo albums that preceded it, Drop is largely the product of Dwyer and stalwart producer/collaborator Chris Woodhouse. It has the same scattershot character of said predecessors, and though I think it works more often than it doesn't, it certainly has casting stink eyes back to the disagreeable Putrifiers II.
More than any Oh Sees release, Drop keeps me off balance. Its paltry 31 minute runtime simply isn't equipped to allow the variety to cohere into something consistently enjoyable. The album is bookended by its two most compelling pieces: 'Penetrating Eye' rips and snorts out of the gate, ready to throw down and mow 'em down, while 'The Lens' is the band's best attempt yet at a whimsical 60s British orchestral psych-folk piece, with a vague 'Penny Lane' vibe. I appreciate that 'King's Nose' is trying something new but it doesn't pull it off, the transitions between sections seeming sloppy, the song as a whole overstuffed with ideas. I can already hear you yelling about it so, yes, it's true, 'Encrypted Bounce' is a classic Oh Sees track....for live shows. In the studio, recorded mostly solo by Dwyer, it's robbed of the fierceness and band-interplay it needs to take full flight. Listen to the drumming on headphones sometime, and compare it to what the modern live lineup brings to it. In fact, as a whole Drop has that issue of a single person trying to recreate a full band on their own, so that tracks such as 'Savage Victory' and 'Drop' sound oddly hollow and manicured. Throughout most of the album, Dwyer's vocals are easier to pick out, though he often uses a more mellow/soft delivery that makes me picture someone recording the vocals late at night and trying not to wake up their roommate. 'Transparent World' starts off strong, with its blown-out bass/guitar and drunk AF keyboard sounds grinding down the pavement, until the ethereal vocoder-ish vocals kick in, adding nothing. This song should've been an instrumental, it would ease the whiplash transition between it and the following album closer.
Perhaps the best way to sum up Drop is to imagine that Floating Coffin was recorded solo by Dwyer, instead of live-in-studio by the band. And that it used some of the Moon Sick EP tracks in place of the polished coherency of the actual Floating Coffin tracklist. And that it had weak vocal performances. And that it was eight minutes shorter. Anyway, I might be more forgiving of Drop's flaws if it was an EP, though only just a bit more. It's not Putrifiers II but it's no Castlemania, either.
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