Thee Oh Sees - Putrifiers II (Vinyl LP, CD)

This is more than an EP, it's knocking on 40 minutes long and sports a walloping ten tracks to its name! What it is without a shadow of doubt, is the sound of Dwyer and co. flexing their creative muscles and diversifying in pace and style again after the frenzied psych-garage onslaught of 'Carrion Crawler'. Ranging anyplace on the bent, crooked 60's o-meter between Dwyer's solo lullaby strange-folk musings, that would appeal to maybe fans of Kurt Vile or Syd Barrett, capping off the journey all the way back to the "Free on PCP" energy of cracking opening gambit 'Wax Face'. This one in particular I'm fond of, I'm sure they played it last time I saw them live as it fits in with the possessed manic energy and 60's garage trippiness of their current live show

However, nothing on here is predictable and that is the records' strength - eclecticism - but the album has more of a coherency, consistency and personality for me than, say 'Warm Slime' or the crazed 'Castlemania', as good as those records are. This, dare I say it, is one of the most accessible Oh Sees releases to date, a great primer for this multi-faceted bunch of imps. A couple o' tunes could well get away with a feature on the Radio 2 evening playlist haha, especially the beat-group-era pebble-y nugget that is 'Flood's New Light', all strummy tambourine-drenched rigidity and ba-ba-bas...

From the blissed rose-tinted strum-along of 'Hang A Picture' with its subtle measured dusting of brass and snaky low-end guitar hum to the wistful fiddle-enriched om-fest of 'So Nice', 'Putrefiers II' is a personable treasure chest of moods constantly shot through with their hallmark brilliance, not to mention the wilful strangeness that makes them simply one of the most charming and curious San Franciscan bands to ever emerge from that hallowed City. The title track is a real brooding gothic-garage creeper that forms a blistering centrepiece and sums up the slight wrongness about them I love so much. So...yet another marvellous outing for these guys....thanks for making my week!