Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler / The Dream

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips
Tracklist

A1 - Carrion Crawler
A2 - Contraption/Soul Desert
A3 - Robber Barons
A4 - Chem-Farmer
A5 - Opposition
B1 - The Dream
B2 - Wrong Idea
B3 - Crushed Grass
B4 - Crack In Your Eye
B5 - Heavy Doctor

5...according to our Brian on Thu 17 Nov, 2011.

It's getting to be a bit tense in the office these days, for when a new Thee Oh Sees record comes in there's more than half of us clamouring to review it. That's known in the trade as a fan-boy tussle. Mike got the last one, Business Lady has reviewed more Dwyer & co records than she's had manicures and Dave didn't steal the promo and run home boggledy-eyed laughing & shuffling like a demented cretin such as I did. So here we have, in their own words, the closest thing you'll get to their incendiary psychotic live shows. I don't totally agree this is the only record along those lines, the recent split EP with Total Control & the Masters Bedroom are both highly representative of the whip-tight ferocity this band of wired party monsters brew up on stage. This wonderful LP was originally intended as two EPs but it was born to be an album really. It saves us money and space plus where would they get a sleeve design to top this lunacy, one EP would fall withering to the side while everyone went Nazibug death-trooper crazy. It's not often I go a review without erm....reviewing the music. This lot need no introduction,. this is them at their full band voodoo surf/psych space-rock gremlin best and features some of those irresistible hits-in-waiting they've been pummeling folks with for the last 18 months. You really know what to do here.......

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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 Smile 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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