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Thee Oh Sees - Putrifiers II
Like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer draws much of his inspiration from early garage and 60s psych rock, although his music often takes on a more garish, macabre form evident in everything from the instrumentation and Dwyer’s occasionally abrasive vocals to the album covers and song titles. With Putrifiers II, Dwyer & Co. put the brakes on the insanity, releasing their most self-controlled, focused and chill work to date. Accessibility is not something most fans of Thee Oh Sees are looking for, so I imagine this will be seen as a disappointing entry to some, but for me, it highlights Dwyer’s songwriting skills more than any of their previous albums while still retaining everything that I’d already loved about them. The addition of more krautrockish sounds, particularly in “So Nice” and “Lupine Dominus” along with a newfound tenderness in their psychedelia, verging on folk, at least on the Byrds-esque “Goodbye Baby” scratched me right where I itched and gives more proof that this is a band that cannot only consistently surprise its fans but pull in new ones by branching out without sacrificing one iota of what makes them such a damn entertaining group.
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