Oh Sees, Pink Reason and K-Holes surprise landed on a Wild Yaks show at Glasslands and charged the place with a rawness that’s hard to come by short of packed houses at 2am on Saturdays.
I missed Pink Reason. K-Holes have been getting some affection in part or largely because of their association with the Black Lips, and their swampy three-chord stuff is another extension of that messy, do-woppy fever that was called revivalist before it became so prevailingly trendy that it’s ripened and ready to birth its own rightful period-name from the great Genre Deciders in the sky: messier and louder than anything past decades came up with in what we’ve been calling garage, with decibel levels throwing up walls of “shoe gaze” and stage antics that have little to do with looking at your feet.
John Dwyer’s Oh Sees recently dropped a heavy album ripe with vocal harmonies and crunchy guitar riffage, but their live experience is perhaps more remarkable. It’s nothing new for performers to deep throat mics during their shows (see: AIDS Wolf, Bradford Cox), but Dwyer gargles them like a remedy for his hacking vocal fits, seeming to frantically keep from swallowing the thing. And unlike many a younger band trying to find what exactly it’s trying to do, no one seems out of place in Thee Oh Sees: Brigid Dawson’s backing vocals are the band’s silver lining, and Petey Damitt is hard to stop watching; with his two-note backing guitar riffs, suit, and jittery movements he’s like a guilt free Rivers Cuomo.
