OCS
Memory Of A Cut Off Head

2017 was a year, musically speaking, of side projects as far as I'm concerned. These OCS are a sporadic parallel project of the Ohsees, still led by John Dwyer, who here takes on the unusual role of a folk singer. In truth, OCS was the name of a side project to the Coachwhips (Dwyer's first band) active 20 years ago and revived to honor the hundredth release of his label Castle Face Records. A sporadic work, therefore, and as described, might attract very little. And yet, "Memory..." has the conceptual solidity of an album written with calm and inspiration.

The project involves the collaboration of his friend Brigid Dawson on organ and vocals, and Mikal Cronin on strings.

Varied and disorienting is the listening experience of this "Memory..." (which, despite the title, doesn't seem to echo the Italian band CSI) due to its erratic wandering in lands unknown to Dwyer's band. From the country rock of the title track, it transitions to quasi-medieval madrigals, enhanced by Dawson's voice ("The Remote Viewer"), bucolic wave-like vignettes that melt into analog glitches ("The Baron Sleeps And Dreams"), returns of the flute, an old passion of Dwyer ("On And On Corridor"), leading up to the country folk return of the concluding "Lift A Finger".

Commendable is the arrangement work on almost all tracks, especially the strings (listen to the delicate "The Fool" as confirmation), and even though in some cases it borders on plagiarism towards classic Bowie ("The Chopping Block" starts identically to "Space Oddity") and an exaggerated catatonic state ("Time Tuner"), overall, a pleasant and very successful experiment.