Oh Sees Retrospective #15: Putrifiers II

I have a really bad habit of buying a book with every intention of reading it immediately and it ends up getting put off and put off. It sits out, undisturbed, usually on either a nightstand or a coffee table; it gathers dust and is occasionally glanced at with increasing self-criticism. Well, I'm happy to report that I am currently reading something: How Music Works by David Byrne. As it's written by someone deeply involved in the artform, it gives me somewhat of a similar feel as the legendary book/longform interview that Francois Truffaut did with Alfred Hitchcock. Anyway, the section about how recording technology has shaped music, and vice versa, is filled to the brim with minor “ah ha!” moments. Such as? Well, such as, once multi-track recording was introduced, artists no longer needed a full band playing together live in the studio. If you were a Brian Wilson-esque auteur, you could even record each instrument and vocal line yourself. Some artists did and still do record as a full band in the studio, though the choice is now more about the aesthetic qualities and level of control over the music this allows than it is about how much more convenient it is not to corral a group of musicians. I used to always assume when John Dwyer did what are effectively solo albums under the Oh Sees name, it was because he wanted to get something out fast without having to get the band together. With more Oh Sees history under my belt, I now realize how wrong I was.


Coming as it did between beloved juggernauts Carrion Crawler/The Dream and Floating Coffin, Putrifiers II has persistently struck me as an overshadowed, oft-forgotten album. Released on September 11^th, 2012, it's yet another Oh Sees record labelled as an EP but is clearly a full-length LP. Some versions of the cover art/back art have EP on them, some don't. Why this happened, I have no idea, and I could find nothing to explain it in my research. I'm not even sure which album art is “official” since there's at least two variants with different wording. I should say before we get any further that I haven't heard the Australian bonus disc with the demos. As my Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2 retrospective made clear, I don't find demos and outtakes all that interesting, sooooo let's just focus on the album itself. One more sidenote before we get down to brass tacks—the cover art, and art elsewhere in/on this album, is terrible. I'm not the biggest fan of Warm Slime's art, which was done by the same artist (Kyle Ranson), but at least it's abstract and has interesting use of colors. Putrifiers II just seems like it's trying to be bad, an even more ugly version of the figure on the cover of Tears Of The Valedictorian, now rendered in anemic tones of gray with clashing/eye piercing rainbow text.


It's clear to anyone familiar with the band's work why Putrifiers II is overshadowed, so let's break down why it's oft-forgotten. For starters, the production is oddly skeletal sounding. It was mostly recorded/performed solo by John Dwyer, so even the more typical garage rock songs sound a bit too thin and polished, like somebody trying to replicate a full band's sound. 'Wax Face' has always struck me as a bit bloodless and forgettable, while 'Flood's New Light' comes off as if it were a Castlemania leftover without the rough edges and lower-fi production that made that record so beguiling. Speaking of, in some ways the solo recording style and diversity of sounds on Putrifiers II make it feel like an unofficial sequel to that album. Yet unlike Castlemania, there's something very disjointed and poorly paced about the varied styles of its successor. From backloading the record with two English psych-folk string-laden tracks ('Goodnight Baby' and 'Wicked Park'), to putting the swampy Velvet Underground-esque dirge 'So Nice' too early in the running, to the way the two longest songs start off side B of the record and neither of them have enough ideas to justify their length...it's a mess that never gels and clicks in the mind the way that Castlemania eventually does.


The biggest top-down flaw with Putrifiers II is that it feels rushed and careless. Sure, Oh Sees's prolificacy means they won't put out an absolute banger every year, but that has never stopped them from being consistently interesting and putting out a product that feels complete. Putrifiers II comes off as much like an odds-and-sods compilation as it does a fully realized artistic work. I mean, is that supposed to be a flute solo on 'Will We Be Scared?' Maybe he forgot to go back and play an actual solo or melody line that would keep your attention, because the last minute and a half of the song is nothing but bored vamping. 'Lupine Dominus' is as slight as its runtime suggests, one of the most forgettable krautrock jams they ever recorded, with a lead guitar line that sounds like somebody trying to learn to play a trumpet for the first time, all puckered and teethy and duck farty. Meanwhile there's the absolute waste of time 'Cloud #1', a drone/noise track of someone sustaining random atonal keyboard chords for a couple minutes, something anybody could make in their sleep. It doesn't help that the track seems carelessly thrown in between two songs and does absolutely nothing to either bridge the transition between them or to contrast with them in some thoughtful way. Even when it can use 'trying something new' as an excuse, Putrifiers II's songs still need another edit or reworking to achieve what they were going for. I really want to talk about the title track, which is trying something new yet fails because of what an overlong and undercooked experiment it is...but I suspect you get the point by now. No need to flog a dead putrifier.


I understand that this all feels like I'm savaging the album. It's never my intention for these retrospectives to perform like an assassination, let alone an autopsy. Yet I can't find much positive to say about Putrifiers II. It is without question the most average, the most bland, the most forgettable Oh Sees album to date. In some ways, sure, its variety might make it a good gateway record for new fans, though it's a gateway you'll never return to once you're on the inside. What I mean is, it's not awful, it simply suffers from comparison. I defy anyone to name a single song on this record that is a true standout in the Oh Sees discography, one that has a musical idea or song-type that hasn't been done a dozen times before, and also done much better. I get that some people really dig Putrifiers II, and it baffles me—it's like saying Rogue One is your favorite Star Wars movie. It's an opinion, so therefore I can't really deny its validity, but I sure as hell will question its validity. For me, both projects are full of ideas that were done much better elsewhere, and what is “new” is done poorly. Nobody asked for a film telling the story of how they got the plans for the Death Star, and nobody needs Putrifiers II if they've heard other Oh Sees records.

Oh Sees Retrospective #14: Carrion Crawler/The Dream

I've never been a Christmas kind of person. It's been my least favorite holiday for a long time, and it seems to always be a melancholy time of year. 2019's holiday season has so far been especially difficult because I'm on my own, living at a friend's place in Columbus. He's vacationing abroad with his girlfriend until after the new year, and my wife and I are in the middle of one of those awkward “we're not speaking” kind of arguments. This is all the cherry on top to what will go down as, no hyperbole, one of the worst years I've ever had. So while a lot of people seem to love the end-of-year seasonal traditions, like looking back on the past year by ranking movies and music in top ten lists, I just want this fucking year to be over. Given all of this, my preferred form of looking back is to revisit some of my all time favorite things and to not think about anything that happened in 2019. Sure, I just saw Knives Out in the theater (a fantastic film, by the way) but I've also been rewatching, say, Pulp Fiction and the best episodes of Trailer Park Boys.


As for music, you ask? Well, aside from mainlining Microcastle by Deerhunter and First Come, First Served by Dr. Doooom aka Kool Keith, I also can't stop listening to Carrion Crawler/The Dream. And no, it's not just because I'm writing this retrospective. Much as it may be a foregone conclusion that I love this album, we'll at least try to see if anything bahs my humbugs when I once again put down my fandom banner and put on my critical lenses.


Let's ignore the fact that the back of the record sleeve says this is an EP: Carrion Crawler/The Dream is the third and final full length release from Oh Sees in 2011, arriving on November 8^th. If anyone has a concrete answer as to why the back sleeve says EP, I'd love to know. I would speculate, based on interviews and comments from the band, it was because originally this was going to be an EP based around 'The Dream.' When they wrote 'Carrion Crawler' (and perhaps one or two more tracks) they decided to put it all out together. Recorded and mixed by stalwart Oh Sees collaborator Chris Woodhouse, the album was finished in only five days and done entirely live as a full band in the studio. This approach paid off like a hacked slot machine for Frog Eyes on the similarly bombastic and long-song-heavy Paul's Tomb (A Triumph). Whereas the key to that album was adding a second guitarist, Carrion Crawler/The Dream takes full flight by adding Lars Finberg as the second drummer. It doesn't hurt that Oh Sees also delivered one of their most cohesive batch of songs yet, with a special emphasis on krautrock rhythms and song structures.


Look, we all know that this record is a classic in the Oh Sees canon. Most fans I've encountered seem to adore it and keep it permanently in their top five. We also all know that 'The Dream' is one of their towering achievements; it's been a fixture in live shows for years now and it's still their most popular song on Spotify. What we all might not know, or perhaps remember, is how many other fantastic songs come alongside 'The Dream.' Nobody ever seems to talk about 'Robber Barons', with its patient pace and wall of sound guitars. Also undeservedly forgotten, 'Chem-Farmer' has an absolute unit of a bassline that will rattle your skull if you crank it on a good set of speakers or headphones. Speaking of skulls, I would totally buy this record just for the cover art alone. I mean, wouldn't you? Yeah you would; I knew I liked you.


Special commendation must be given to 'Carrion Crawler' as one of the most perfect album openers in the history of Oh Sees album openers. It careens down the road with an addictive descending guitar riff that nods so heavily toward Pink Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive' it risks headbutting the piper at the gates of dawn, if you catch my drift. It makes me embarrassed because I didn't make the connection until they started using part of 'Interstellar' as a soundcheck/introduction to some live shows in the last year or two. Now, if I did have any nitpick with Carrion Crawler/The Dream, it's that 'Opposition' (or 'Opposition (With Maracas)', if you have the vinyl record) and 'Wrong Idea' are slight little trifles that seem underwritten by comparison to the rest of the songs...although...


...Although I do think they're purposefully positioned to mitigate the time and reality warping effects of 'The Dream.' I suppose this means I have to unpick that nit, then.


So, there you have it. A foregone conclusion about how great this album is...um, well foregone. No surprises, eh? Well, you know something? The holidays aren't always about surprises, wrapped gifts that tantalize with their mystery contents. Just as people still watch the marathon of A Christmas Story year after year, sometimes you want something familiar—indeed, something that familiarity has worn away the flaws of. You may not think this is a perfect record though I'd be willing to bet all the reindeer in Norway that you'd be hard pressed to name another Oh Sees album that is both a great entry point for newcomers and a hardcore fan favorite. But I digress. Happy holidays, and always remember: the dream, it seems, is peeking into real life.


[Unimportant footnote: I'm still not sure what part of Can's 'Soul Desert' is contained in 'Contraption/Soul Desert', even after listening to the original song and also the demo of 'Contraption' on Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2. I think maybe it's just some lyrics or a riff or chord....?]

Oh Sees Retrospective #13: Castlemania

Now that we're deep into the discography of Oh Sees, it's got me thinking about what it is about certain bands that inspires such loyalty from fans. To put it another way, do people keep following Oh Sees and exploring their earlier releases because of a consistent quality? Is it because they continue to surprise us by trying new things, adding new members, changing their name, and/or taking stylistic left turns seemingly on a whim? Is it because John Dwyer is such a good looking fellow? I suspect the reason (or reasons) differs for every fan. When it comes to Castlemania, though, I've noticed that lovers and haters alike have the same reasoning for their feelings toward it: it's different.


Following up the release of Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2 by only a couple months, Castlemania arrived in this world on May 10, 2011. Like Dog Poison, it was mostly recorded by Dwyer at home, with significant contributions from usual collaborator Brigid Dawson as well as then-fresh faced new boy Ty Segall. Unlike Dog Poison, Castlemania feels like a fully realized, finished project. You get the sense that he had these songs and ideas sitting around, and they wouldn't work with a full psych/garage rock arrangement, so he took another crack at doing them like he would have in the early days. This means more acoustic guitars, sure, but it also means a more expansive palette of sounds and instruments than on the OCS records. Moreover, when the album does rock, on 'Corrupted Coffin' and 'A Wall, A Century 2', it's hardly Help leftovers; rather, it's a skronky noise fest and a menacing, suffocating stomper, respectively.


While it doesn't sound so different from other Oh Sees projects that you'll be reaching for the sleeve to confirm the artist name, it can be said that Castlemania largely exists in its own sound world. Few Oh Sees albums are better served by a listen on headphones. In fact, between its grim lyrical content and insular atmosphere, I recommend enjoying it on headphones at 1 in the morning after everyone else has gone to bed while you're still awake taking bong hits and beer sips and thinking about life and death. In terms of the mix of poppy songwriting and the eerie/dark 60s psychedelia permeating out of the grooves, Castlemania brings to mind Olivia Tremor Control and their affiliates in the Elephant 6 collective. I mean, couldn't you see it showing up on shelves in 1999 next to Her Wallpaper Reverie and Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume 1?


What strikes me the most about this album is how long it took me to appreciate it. Back in 2011 when I discovered Oh Sees, I wrote a short, dismissive review of Castlemania, which is so poorly done I won't bother linking or quoting it. When I think back to my views at the time, and my taste in music, a better way to explain my initial negative opinion is that I was more inclined to expect things from records instead of letting them tell me their tale. I was such a huge instant fan of Help and Carrion Crawler/The Dream that it's all I expected or wanted from Oh Sees. When Castlemania turned out to be more like Olivia Tremor Control and less like Ty Segall, I couldn't even begin to hear it for what it was.


It's only with the last eight years of growth, further musical experiences, and especially doing this retrospective that I've come around to Castlemania. I defy anyone to not want to sing along to 'I Need Seed.' It's infectious and fun, contrasting with the chaotic intensity and clangor of the title track. I love the structure of this record, the way it balances its variety of tones and styles while still making for a coherent journey. In particular I love how 'The Horse Was Lost' seemingly closes out the album, with its distant saxophone moans and flute-like organ, before a minute of silence leads into the three covers that actually close the album. It's as if you just watched an intimate performance in someone's living room and now they're doing a few covers as an encore, with two of them sung by guests/friends. Sure, the very last song on Castlemania is a weirdly dour affair that sounds like Nico's The Marble Index, but I'm going to let that nitpick slide because I happen to love that album and being different is part of what makes Castlemania great. One criticism that does still hold for this record it's that you really have to be OK with Dwyer's affected vocals from this era. He purposefully sounds more bratty, nasally, and croaky than his natural voice, and if you find that kind of thing hard to overlook, this won't be a tolerable listen for long.


Since it's sandwiched in the 2011 releases between a sexy double album compilation and an adored fan favorite, and also since it's so different from their other records, Castlemania is easy to overlook and to skip over. I know many fans are eager to get to Carrion Crawler/The Dream. Sure, it's an almost universally beloved album; it's high on the list of recommendations for new fans and often makes top five placings in rankings of personal favorites of the devoted. Of course I'm excited to get to it. But give Castlemania its due first. Absolutely give this one another chance if it hasn't clicked with you before. It eventually did for me, and while it's never going to be one of my favorites, at least now I'm able to see it as the excellent and unique gem that others have been digging for years.

Oh Sees Retrospective #12: Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2

Compilations, whether they be greatest hits packages, outtakes and rarities, or singles collections, are tricky things to approach critically. After all, do you judge them as a whole? On a song-by-song basis? In the case of greatest hits, it’s not necessarily something the band chose to do, and even if they are involved, it’s largely done for commercial rather than artistic reasons. As for outtakes, rarities, and singles compilations, they’re rarely given the same care and organized thought that goes into proper full-length releases. By their nature, they come from a limited pool of material, often with jarring stylistic or production differences, coming from different years in a band’s career. While Oh Sees’ Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2 does its best to be a coherent listen, its most fundamental issue is actually none of the above. It purports to contain all the singles and EPs the band had released up to 2011, and careless reviews such as AllMusic’s accept this tale. In all fairness, it’s not so much a lie as an omission of the whole truth.

2011 is up there with the most prolific years in Oh Sees history: even setting aside this double album compilation, you’ve got two other full length albums to tackle, chew on, and digest. Amongst fans, this middle period of the band is overwhelmingly the favorite era, and the two albums released in 2011—Castlemania and Carrion Crawler/The Dream—regularly show up on lists and Internet posts of fan rankings. Obviously, I’ll get to those eventually, but I couldn’t go any further with this retrospective without noting what an embarrassment of riches this year was. Anyway!

Released on March 8, 2011, Singles Collection Vol. 1 & 2 (hereafter referred to as Singles for simplicity) does indeed include a metric fuckton of hard to find Oh Sees material. Collectors and completionists will still want to track down all the original releases, in particular the recently reissued Grave Blockers EP, because they are not all contained in full on this compilation. For the rest of us, there’s still a lot to take in even if it’s not the whole non-album Oh Sees story. Just trying to research the releases that the tracks on Singles came from, to say nothing of following the chronology of the tracks, made my eyes cross. Sadly, my vinyl copy of this release is back in America, so I don’t have the full info inside its glorious sleeves. I apologize for not supplying my usual level of detail on this front, but happily I am moving back to the States in a matter of weeks and I should have my records out of storage soon after. I hope.

This being a release intended for hardcore fans and not some kind of A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson-esque introductory release to let the curious get a taste, I won’t bother telling you get your hands on this ASAP. You either have it already or you are getting around to it soon. With that out of the way, let’s hold Singles up to a critical eye and see what I can shake out.

Is every track on here a winner? No. I’ve never been a huge fan of demos in general, so ‘Catiastic Tackle - Demo’ is wasted on me, and ‘Contraption - Demo’ provides no useful hints to where it starts and ends when paired with its eventual ‘Soul Desert’ twin on Carrion Crawler/The Dream. ‘Kingsmeat’, meanwhile, feels like an overlong and undercooked scrap on the cutting room floor of Help, containing a vocal so distorted and unintelligible it sounds like it was recorded through a bullhorn from a quarter mile away.

Does Singles suffer from pacing/tracklisting order issues which cause it not to flow very well? Yes. The stretch from ‘Hey Buddy’ to ‘Grave Blockers’ has songs I do love, such as the underrated folk chestnut ‘I Agree’, yet it’s still too many slow and low energy songs in a row; more than once, I’ve fallen asleep to side B of the record. No, I’m not exaggerating for comedic effect.

Most importantly, are there some kick ass Oh Sees tracks on here? Fuck yeah. They definitely outweigh the bad ones. The cover of Ty Segall’s ‘The Drag’ is a reverent tipping of the hat to a then-up-and-coming garage rocker. ‘Carol Anne’ opens the compilation with a roar, followed by John Dwyer delighting us with a line about falling off his skateboard and turning his nipples into a belt(?) at the start of the next song. And then there’s ‘Bloody Water’, one of Oh Sees’ most infectious songs, with especially excellent backup vocals from Brigid Dawson.

In the context of their discography, Singles serves as a clearing of the plates, a chance for everyone to catch up before the next leg of the voyage of the S.S. Oh Sees. Fans of the early to middle period of the band looking for more will be well served by stopping in this port. Before he would sail with his crew into the more krautrock influenced second half of their middle period, John Dwyer would first strip the band down to himself and Brigid, producing the wonderfully weird Castlemania, an album even more varied and unfocused than Singles. I mean that in a good way. What else can you say about an Oh Sees album that has more in common with Olivia Tremor Control than it does Can and The Necessary Evils? Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Oh Sees Retrospective #11: Warm Slime

Is it possible to love something and to simultaneously see the flaws it possesses? I realize this seems like a pretty open and shut case. Plenty of people love so-bad-they’re-good movies or even talk about “hate watching” a TV show. But I think this idea becomes a little more interesting and open ended when you narrow it down a bit. To explain what I’m getting at: people love movies like The Room or Troll 2 not in spite of their incompetence, but because of it. You don’t see anyone talking about the Star Wars prequels as so-bad-they’re-good movies; rather, you see some people dissecting their flaws, even if they admit they get some enjoyment out of the movies. And I am one of those people. I see many problems with the prequels. They possess creative decisions and stories/characters that by turns infuriate me, baffle me, trouble me, and make me imagine how I would fix them. However, I don’t love the prequels and I also don’t hate them. What I do is to ignore the flaws so that I can enjoy them for what they are, for the things in them that are enjoyable.

I was talking to my wife recently about all these ideas and it made me realize, you also can love something while not even needing to ignore its flaws. I unironically love the old Godzilla movies, because I know what they are, and therefore to what standard I should hold them. Compared to other movies, they’re cheesy and have special effects that aged horribly and stupid plots and lame and/or irritating characters. But they’re awesome, in and of themselves. With all of this in mind, I have to come out and say it: I love ‘Warm Slime’ but it’s got problems. The album as a whole I love, sure—that title track though…well, we’ll get to that in a bit. Let’s set the stage, first. Could you help me carry these mic stands and cases of beer?

Warm Slime was released on May 11^th, 2010, coming more than a full year after its sonic predecessor, Help. Sure, they put out Dog Poison in the interim but that’s a different animal entirely (pun intended). On a side note, Warm Slime isn’t that much longer than Dog Poison yet it does feel like a completed, satisfying LP. Just wanted to be clear about that after my savaging of Dog Poison for its brevity (among other things). Anyway, I’d encourage everyone to go check out Warm Slime’s Wikipedia page, in particular the interviews/articles listed in the References section at the bottom. There’s a lot of fascinating background information about the recording of this album, from the nitty gritty of how they recorded it to the general vibe of the recording session. The TL, DR version is that the band consciously wanted to capture the energy and force of their live shows, so they rented out a club, day drank beer, and busted the whole thing out in one marathon 12 hour session. No overdubs. They recruited Mike Donovan of Sic Alps to play guitar, and recording engineer Chris Woodhouse banged a tambourine sometimes. They recorded the title track last so that they were drunk enough and warmed up enough to give it what it needed. Their intention with ‘Warm Slime’ was to do their own version of classic long songs they grew up hearing, such as ‘When The Music’s Over’ by the Doors, or more crucially, ‘Yoo Doo Right’ by Can.

Speaking of Can…

While for the most part Warm Slime continues their well-oiled garage rock/psychedelic concoction, it’s the turning point where their krautrock influence became much more overt. You wouldn’t have fan favorite tracks like ‘The Dream’ or ‘I Come From The Mountain’ without ‘Warm Slime.’ Just as I’m starting to feel like Smote Reverser was the dress rehearsal for Face Stabber, ‘Warm Slime’ is a first attempt at doing what we have come to expect from Oh Sees albums. Unfortunately, it also overshadows the rest of the songs on its album. Sure, we all know and love ‘I Was Denied’, but does anybody really remember ‘Everything Went Black’, or think it’s any kind of improvement or progression from Help? I’m not even implying that the second side of the album is bad or weak. They’re fine songs, great songs, even. The “I’m Dracula’s sister!” bit from the opening of ‘MT Work’ is one of my favorite moments on any Oh Sees record. It’s just that the shorter songs on side two pale in comparison to tracks on previous Oh Sees albums, and tracks that are yet to come. Most of all, though, they aren’t as interesting or memorable as the title track. And oh buddy, that title track!

OK. Listen. I said earlier that I love ‘Warm Slime’ but that it’s got problems. Let me begin by saying I love long songs as much as anyone. I’ll use less popular examples, because we all know and love the songs Dwyer referenced as inspirations for ‘Warm Slime.’ At least I hope so; if you have never gotten high and listened to ‘Yoo Doo Right’, you haven’t been living your best life. Anyway, my favorite Frog Eyes song is ‘Bushels’, which is nine minutes long; my favorite album by them is Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, which has only one track less than three minutes long, and four that are longer than six minutes. I love the Grateful Dead and Phish, known for long jams that frequently go on for 10, 20, in one case 50+ minutes! So it’s not that ‘Warm Slime’ is long, that isn’t its flaw. I love the song yet I’ve come to finally understand why it is I think it’s got problems: it doesn’t have enough ideas or progression to justify its length. But surely, you may be saying, other long Oh Sees songs, are also static and do the same thing for minutes on end? To that I’d respond, do they really? Go back and pay attention, you’ll see that there’s more development, meaningful solos, and a sense of progression, even if it is just from point A to point B.

Often long Oh Sees songs are described as hypnotic, whereas I would describe ‘Warm Slime’ as repetitive and intend that as a pejorative. Sure, they start out in full flight and then around the two minute mark they shift gears from garage rock rancor into a krautrock trance. Sure, they get quiet halfway through the song and build it back up. But again, listen closely to the musical development that’s going on. Petey Dammit plays the same bass note, over and over, and it’s not hypnotic, it’s monotonous. Quite literally, it is a monotone. Doing this with a non-tuned instrument, like, say, a drum works fine. But when it’s a bass, or keyboard, or guitar, or I dunno, a harp, it eventually gets boring and tedious. If you’ve always wondered why ‘The Dream’ is such an amazing song, and why perhaps you, also, like it more than ‘Warm Slime’, this is why. Even setting aside that ‘The Dream’ is shorter, there’s more notes and ideas going on there. The bass line is the anchor of everything; the guitars dance in and out of phase with it, by turns supporting its propulsion with staccato chords and spraying rhythmically detached noise and solo lines over the top of it, like fireworks into the night sky. The bassline in ‘The Dream’ has more notes, has more variance in volume and how much it olds your attention over the course of the song. It’s a heartbeat, and you don’t always notice your own heartbeat, do you? But you know what you do notice, every time, and can’t ignore, and what the ‘Warm Slime’ bassline has begun to make me think of? Something that maybe at first you try to but eventually you can’t ignore, and it gets old fast? Pencils down, any guesses? It makes me think of someone running a vacuum cleaner.

Now, here’s what is so weird for me about writing all of this. I still love ‘Warm Slime.’ I still would consider it, if perhaps not one of the best Oh Sees songs, one of the most essential. How do I reconcile this? Well, it’s like I said at the beginning of this retrospective: you can love something while not needing to ignore its flaws. I fully acknowledge the flaws of ‘Warm Slime’, but when I listen to it, I don’t need to ignore the bassline, or its overall relative lack of development and ideas. To use a non-musical example, I know that MacGruber is a comedy with flaws. But I unashamedly love it, and in order to love it, I don’t need to ignore them. Whenever ‘Warm Slime’ begins, I get a rush of energy and excitement. Fuck yeah, I think to myself, let’s do this! There are precious few things in my life right now that give me this feeling. I don’t want to bring my personal life into this, I’m just trying to demonstrate, ‘Warm Slime’ is a kickass song. Like me, it’s got flaws. But I know that my wife loves me, not despite my flaws, not because of them, but because she loves me, full stop. She doesn’t need to ignore my flaws to think I’m a kickass person. If a song can make me feel like ‘Warm Slime’ does, and I can make my wife feel like how ‘Warm Slime’ makes me feel, who needs to dwell on flaws? We should talk about them, and hope they get better (spoiler alert: they do, Carrion Crawler/The Dream is amazing), but they don’t always, inherently, spoil things. That’s a good place to be in.

So, yeah. Warm Slime is great.

Oh Sees Retrospective #10: Dog Poison

What do you expect when you see something labelled as a full LP, and not an EP or single? Is it only about the length? Is it about how many songs there are? Is it about artistic intent? Let’s consider one of the most famous short albums in history, Slayer’s towering masterpiece, Reign In Blood. At a svelte 28 minutes, it’s significantly shorter than the average LP, which I usually think of as being around 45-60 minutes in length. To me, usually, I think of sub-half hour releases as being EPs. But that’s not really an accurate metric, the more I think about it. Reign In Blood is short, but it doesn’t feel short. It’s a wholly satisfying experience—adding more songs would dull its skull shattering power, and removing any songs to make it an EP would have similar detrimental effects. Why, then, is it that I feel like Dog Poison doesn’t qualify as a true LP? It can’t be because it’s short, because as we’ve established, that isn’t a fair criterion.

Let’s touch on a few other points and maybe we’ll figure it out along the way. Released mere months after Help, Dog Poison came out on September 28^th, 2009. I’ve long assumed it was an EP of rough demos based on its production style and length, but it’s very clearly described as a finished LP online. Similar to Help, it’s not on the Oh Sees Bandcamp page and I couldn’t find any information about who plays on it. Wikipedia seems to suggest it was recorded solely by John Dwyer, though given how much flute is on the album this clearly isn’t true. Strangely, the Castle Face website says that Dog Poison came out “after Warm Slime” which also, clearly, isn’t true. You’d think Dwyer’s personal record label would get that kind of easy detail right but then again, they have a lot of good drugs in California. If anybody can contact him and get me hired as his discography guardian, I’d appreciate it. I don’t mind working weekends and I bother to do even the smallest research!

Every Oh Sees album seems to have its defenders and fans, though with Dog Poison I’ve gotten the impression it has the least amount of them all, with the exception of the earliest OCS records. I also get the impression it’s a divisive release, though unlike the similarly divisive Smote Reverser, I haven’t seen anyone say they outright love it or it’s in their top five favorite Oh Sees records. I’ve never really liked Dog Poison; even when I was considering its quality based on my assumption that it was an EP of rough demos/unfinished songs, I still didn’t like it. In fact, it’s the only Oh Sees album I ever bought on vinyl and traded it back in to the local record store. Shocking, no? I simply don’t have a collector’s mentality in the same way some people do. If I don’t like an album, no matter how rare or expensive it is, I trade it in and let someone else enjoy it. Pay it forward, and all that.

OK, so where does that leave us regarding Dog Poison’s status as a non-LP, but-no-really-it-is-a-LP-you-guys? Time to break it down. It’s short and it feels short. Just as I think the two bonus tracks on most releases of Master’s Bedroom make it feel overlong and weaken the listening experience, there isn’t enough of Dog Poison for it to satisfy. What little music there is comes off as things Dwyer threw together in an afternoon when he was bored at home. The lo-fi production style does the songs no favors, muting and muddling the sound such that even when listened to on headphones I can’t tell if it’s Dwyer or Brigid Dawson doing the back-up vocals. It further reinforces the notion that the entire album is slapdash and rough around the edges, but not in the pleasing way that Castlemania is more lo-fi and rough than other Oh Sees releases. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Castlemania but it has something to it that I uncover and enjoy more each time I have revisit it. It’s the one I’m most looking forward to doing a retrospective post on, whereas Dog Poison is something I’m looking forward to being done with. It’s like a birthday party that is somehow boring and depressing when you were expecting fun and entertaining.

Anyway, with far fewer songs than Castlemania, Dog Poison’s weak tracks stand out more starkly, and the production does no favors. The songwriting quality is poorer than it has been since the days of OCS—speaking of, I find Dog Poison to be a regression to the infantile pseudo-folk of those early releases. Other than the use of flute, which is a fun novelty, the music and instrumental playing are frankly kind of boring. Just when he was doing new and interesting things with electric guitars, Dwyer goes back to the acoustic and has seemingly forgotten how to play anything compelling on it other than it being used for rhythmic chording and time keeping. I almost like ‘It’s Nearly Over’ and then that blown out acoustic guitar punches through with no riff or hook or melody to it. All the instruments seem to bleed into each other and get in each other’s way—‘The Fizz’ could be a fantastic garage rock track, if it didn’t sound like it was recorded by the Mr. Mike Voice Changer/Tape Recorder from Toy Story….that was a quarter mile way…that was also soggy from someone spilling their Guinness on it. I’m exaggerating to make a point, of course. I need to make clear, lo-fi production is fantastic when it’s used effectively and sympathetically—you can’t be a Guided By Voices or Daniel Johnston fan if you can’t embrace tape hiss, warping, and amateurish mixing/mastering. We know Dwyer has access to better equipment so Dog Poison’s production is a deliberate choice. A baffling choice that doesn’t work, but a deliberate choice nonetheless.

If it sounds like I hate Dog Poison, it’s only because I hold Oh Sees albums to such a high standard. Even the releases that I don’t like as much as others have something unique and/or endearing about them. So, no, I don’t hate Dog Poison. It’s just…inessential and kind of pointless to listen to it anymore. Oh Sees have 20+ albums to their name(s), to say nothing of all the EPs (which Dog Poison should have been!) and singles. Why waste your time with this dull, dreary, poorly recorded mess?

Alternate/Hot Take/Spinal-Tap-Reference-Review: Dog Poison? More like Dog Shit!

Oh Sees Retrospective #6: Sucks Blood

2007 was a watershed year for music and videogames. Go back and look at a list of releases in either medium and you’ll find some of the most beloved and influential titles of the modern era. 2007 felt so jam packed with excellent albums that it inspired me to start my music blog at the beginning of 2008. More than any other year I experienced during the time I was keeping up with new releases, 2007 felt like a tidal wave of variety and excellence. I’m still discovering albums from 2007 that I missed out on the first time around. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed Sucks Blood as much back then, but today it’s another addition to the list of great-to-exceptional albums from that year.

Somewhat lost in the shuffle of a stellar year for music, Oh Sees released Sucks Blood on March 20^th (or May 15^th, according to Wikipedia). Confusingly, the album cover continues using The Oh Sees as the group’s name, though the inside cover lists them as their soon-to-be-semi-permanent moniker, Thee Oh Sees. I guess we’re still going through a transition, something borne out by the music. In addition, Dwyer and the group were going through a couple other changes. 2007 was the year that Dwyer’s Castle Face Records was founded (indeed, it was started to release Sucks Blood). More importantly, the album features the debut of Petey Dammit as bassist and second guitarist. If I recall correctly, he often played the role of bassist by running a typical electric guitar through pedals and/or a bass amp to get a fatter, lower sound, possibly using a lower tuning as well. Sleater-Kinney’s two guitarists use similar techniques, and as with Dammit’s work with Oh Sees, it’s an effect I really love as it gives a rock band a more unique sound.

Despite its fearsome title, Sucks Blood is actually a very mellow and sluggish record, and in some ways it serves as a more focused, better produced version of The Cool Death Of Island Raiders. Sucks Blood starts off with the red herring of ‘It Killed Mom’, a loud rocker that points to the future before the album immediately pulls back into the freak folk style that had defined the Oh Sees project. At least this time the production isn’t as overstuffed and distant/muffled sounding as Cool Death. Also crucial is that the songwriting is consistently excellent—‘Golden Phones’ and ‘Iceberg’ being some obvious career highlights, featuring Brigid Dawson’s lovely backup vocals. I’m not crazy about the odd choice of church bells used in the background of ‘Iceberg’ but I will give them credit for using the singing saw way less often. When it does make an appearance on the aforementioned ‘Golden Phones’, it actually blends in well and adds to the slow, dreamy feel of the track. Finally, as with the previous record, I dig the use of the two untitled drone tracks to lend some variety to the proceedings. Actually, the second drone track is worth noting because it’s the closest Oh Sees ever got to ambient music. It’s a field recording of outdoor wind and bird sounds, providing an appropriately languid and mellow end to the album.

Sucks Blood is a great record, a hidden gem in the band’s vast discography as well as the flood of other great 2007 releases. It serves as a satisfying capstone to the first phase of the band’s life, the last time they couldn’t be classified as a rock band. While I am very excited to get to the garage rock era of Oh Sees, I really want to take the time to say how much I’ve enjoyed exploring the freak folk era. It’s a different side of this band and Dwyer’s work in general, and it’s given me a different appreciation for them that I didn’t have before. Anyway, next time on the retrospective: get ready to crank the volume and enter the mosh pit.