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2LP
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CF 093LP
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2022 repress. 2017 release. "Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. The newly shorn Oh Sees waste no time in racing headlong into nightmarish battle with the mighty Orc, clawing even farther up the ghastly peak stormed so satisfyingly by last year's A Weird Exits. The band is in tour-greased, anvil-on-a-balance beam, gut-pleasingly heavy form, nimbly braining -- with equal dashes of abandon and menace -- on this fresh batch of bruisers and brooders, hypnotically stirred into to the cauldron of chaos you've come to expect. Fresh blood Paul Quattrone joins Dan Rincon to form a phalanx of interlocking double drums, alternately propelling and fleet-footing shifting ground to pinion John Dwyer's cliff-face guitars to the boogie. Tim Hellman keeps it swinging like a battle-axe to the eyebrows. The tunes veer toward the violence of their live shows, with a few tasty swerves into other lanes: heavy to lush, groovy to stately. Throughout, it remains sinister in its swaggering skulk, manic in its fuzz-fried fugues. They hit all the sweet spots the heads foggily remember, and there's plenty to sweat over if you just hopped into the sauna. More evil... more complex... more narcotic... more screech... more blare... more whisper... there's even more Brigid. Less 'Thee,' but more of everything else."
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LP
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ITR 222LP
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2022 repress. Magenta vinyl. "What's the first thing you think of when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, melody-maiming John Dwyer careening across your cranium, rounded out by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it's a nail in the coffin of what you thought it meant to make 21st-century rock 'n' roll? Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point -- how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been to pin down since Dwyer launched the project in the late '90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. (While Dwyer still records songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a five-piece featuring keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun and multi-instrumentalist/singer Lars Finberg.) That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010's Warm Slime LP to the mercurial moods of 2008's The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. Now, Thee Oh Sees chase the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania with the scrappy, high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / The Dream. Originally envisioned as two EPs, it was cut live to tape in less than a week at Chris Woodhouse's Sacramento studio in June, reflecting the battering-ram bent of the band's live show better than any bootleg ever could. 'As I'm sure most would agree,' explains Dwyer, 'Castlemania was more of a vocal tirade. This one's meant to pummel and throb.' That it does, whether one blasts the slow, speaker-bruising build of 'The Dream,' the sunburnt organs and dovetailing guitars of 'Crack in Your Eye' or the interstellar instrumental 'Chem-Farmer,' a perfect example of what happens when one takes a well-oiled machine -- a gang of rabid road warriors, really -- and adds a second, groove-locked drum set to the mix. To listen is to realize that Dwyer's music is as manic as the underground comic inclinations of his artwork; colorful and confusing in a way that's more than welcome. It's downright refreshing, like a slap in the face at 5:00 in the morning. Or, as Dwyer puts it, 'You have to leave a mark somehow.'"
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2LP
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ITR 208LP
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Repress. 2011 release. Purple vinyl. "San Francisco's incredibly prolific Thee Oh Sees are back with another full-length album of original tracks plus a smattering of covers. While the group's previous releases on In The Red, Help and Warm Slime, showcase their amped-up, reverb-drenched garage-psych pummel, on Castlemania, John Dwyer and company take a more low-key approach. Dwyer himself describes Castlemania as 'summer-y and poppy'; on many of the tracks, electric guitars are jettisoned for acoustic, and the normally echo-laden vocals are a bit clearer. Happy pop melodies, sweet and somber tunes, psychedelic moves galore, cover versions of The Creation and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and at least one garage stomper all rub elbows on Thee Oh Sees' 'sunshine pop' album. Its release couldn't be more perfectly suited to the time of the year when the sunny skies return and the flowers start blooming. The vinyl for Castlemania is a three-sided double LP housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with a fourth side featuring an etching by William Keihn, who also did the fantastic cover art. Watch for Thee Oh Sees to return later this year with another full-length of pulverizing, heavy stomp. In the meantime, relax and enjoy Castlemania." "John Dwyer deserves a star on the underground garage-punk walk of fame." --Stereogum "This San Francisco garage-punk quartet made for my first real holy-shit moment of this year's SXSW; I had no idea these guys were so great live." --Pitchfork
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LP
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CF 107LP
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2021 repress. "The denizens of Castle Face are not afraid to get their shins dirty mucking around in the stacks and they're well aware of an out-of-press gap of Oh Sees releases right before 2006 when they started the label with Sucks Blood. They're rectifying that and first among these is The Cool Death of Island Raiders, a particularly dusty gem that merits another look. Kicking off the record with what should have been the hit of the summer that year but for the hard C in the title, 'The Gilded Cunt' seems to clearly preface Oh Sees' later psych-skewed pop sensibilities. Chirping birds, gently lapping tempos and the nascent harmonization of Bridgid Dawson and John Dwyer detail a definitive highlight of their early quiet period of the band. The tree hangs heavy with Patrick Mullins' handiwork, manning the musical saw, drums, and an assortment of homemade electronics. It seemed a bit radical to be so quiet about it, but the tunes are total ear-worms among the assorted drones, cut-up bits of tape noise, and mellow front porch-vibes, and the whole thing hangs together in a lovely hand-made way, helped in no small part by Dave Sitek's production (he would later work on Master's Bedroom as well). 'We flew Brigid out a fresh woman and literally sent her home on a plane with a trash bag of her clothes' says Dwyer. Evidently the whole record was accidentally erased at some point right around when the photo on the back of the jacket was taken, which makes it all the more remarkable that the result sounds so casually and confidently careworn."
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2LP
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CF 116LP
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2021 repress, vinyl only. 2019 release. "Hey there, human kids, lift your face out of the feed trough and pluck that feculence from your ears. Hark! A sonar blip from beneath the pile of bodies -- the latest Oh Sees, Face Stabber! Boop, blip, ughhh.... people churning like a boiling swamp. Man, this din is nauseating. The screen flickers for the first time this year with a transmission from two months in the future: 'the internet has deemed guitar music dead and you are free to do whatever the fuck you like ....long live the new flesh!' This album is Soundcloud hip-hop reversed, a far flung nemesis of contemporary country and flaccid algorithmic pop-barf. No songs about money or love are floating in the ether. Just memories, echoes, foggy blurs, blip-blop goes the scope, heavy funk, dystopia-punk canons, long jams, bloated solos dribbling down your cavedin chest. Human cattle like a beef avalanche, right on your burned out face hole. Spider-legs fuzz crawling in your brain. Lots of curse words for your mom. You've gotten the over-population blues, so let's have some art for art's sake. What else are you gonna do? Stare at the sky? Please... fifty carbon copies of you look back at you as you walk the streets. Take a breath, you're going to need it. Take drugs, you're going to need those just to stand in line at the air and water reclamation center soon enough. There's no fruit, buddy. You're at the bleak-peak. They will squeeze you till you're all squeezed out. For fans of fried prog burn-out, squished old-school drool, double drums, lead weight bass, wizard keys (now with poison), old-ass guitar and horrible words with daft meanings. If you don't like it then don't listen, bub. Back to the comments section with you! Easy -- over and out."
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2LP
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CF 110LP
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2021 repress. 2018 release. "Crack the coffers, Oh Sees have spawned another frothy album of head-destroying psych-epics to grok and rock out to. Notice the fresh dollop of organ and keyboard prowess courtesy of Memory Of A Cut Off Head-alum and noted key-stabber Tom Dolas, while the Paul Quattrone/Dan Rincon drum-corps polyrhythmic pulse continues to astound and pound in equal measure, buttressed by the nimble fingered bottom end of Sir Tim Hellman the Brave and the shred-heaven fret frying of John Dwyer, whilst Lady Brigid Dawson again graces the wax with her harmonic gifts. Aside from the familiar psych-scorch familiar to soggy pit denizens the world over, there's a fresh heavy-prog vibe that fits like a worn-in jean jacket comfortably among hairpin metal turns and the familiar but no less hornsworthy guitar fireworks Dwyer's made his calling card. Perhaps the most notable thing about Smote Reverser is the artistic restlessness underpinning its flights of fancy. Dwyer refuses to repeat himself and for someone with such a hectic release schedule, that stretching of aesthetic borders and omnivorous appetite seems all the more superhuman!"
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