Oh Sees
Orc

In the year of the bulimic bands, among the King Gizzard announcing 5 albums just in 2017, and bands releasing an album a year if not more, like Thee Ohsees, what is surprising is the unexpected validity of the albums themselves.

John Dwyer's band made a smart choice last year, which was to inoculate their garage with the kraut vibrio, broadening its horizons and mixing it, sometimes even roughly, with analog electronics and less aligned psychedelia, releasing two albums (“Weird Exits” and “Odd Entrances”) that are among their best releases ever. “Orc” picks up that thread, but seeks to blend within the same track the psych soul with the full-on garage. The result is inconsistent, but it depends on which side of Thee Ohsees you like. If you like the bayonet assault, the initial “The Static God” will make you drool. But it's a trap, because from there on, things get complicated: “Nite Expo” has the big guitars but also a sinusoidal rhythm accompanied by an acidic synth; “Animated Violence” is almost metal until halfway through, then unexpectedly slows down into a not-bad tribal and psychedelic coda. Additionally, the durations increase significantly. The average duration comfortably exceeds 5 minutes, mixing within, as mentioned, the band's dual soul.

Even where the guitars scream, the pace remains slow and hypnotic (“Drowned Beast”) or even almost prog (“Raw Optics”), with extreme experiments like the analog Grateful Dead of “Paranoise”, the war between the swirling drums and full and empty guitars of “Jettisoned” or a whimsical heavy ballad like “Cadaver Dog”. The pièce de résistance and a monstrous piece of a full 8 minutes, “Keys To The Castle”, is a bizarre track tossed between an initial frontal assault, a sudden tranquilizer-induced slowdown, that continues with a rarefied rhythm enriched by a violin, which traces an unpredictable Arabic melody. A track that alone represents the key to entering the mental castle of Dwyer & co.