With a whopping 26 albums under their belt – to say nothing of EPs, compilations, and other releases – one never really knows what they’re going to get when they go to an Osees show. Heck, the band has half a dozen permutations of its own name at this point, from their genesis as Orinoka Crash Suite (OCS) to the mid-period Thee Oh Sees to the minimalist Osees of now. But one thing is for certain – irrespective of name or time period, an Osees gig is a nonstop thrill ride.
The energy of the LA-based band is truly unmatched as they take the stage in Cambridge, MA at the exact halfway point of their tour, led by guitarist and vocalist John Dwyer. Though the band operates from the opposite coast, Dwyer hails from about an hour south in Providence, and he thanks everyone who made the trip up to the Boston area from his home state. As this writer can attest to personally, everything and everyone out of Rhode Island is a little bit warped, and the nation’s tiniest state has spawned some of its most thrilling and consistently noisy musical acts, from Daughters to Lightning Bolt to Osees themselves by way of Dwyer.
As they wind through songs from no less than 10 different releases throughout the night, the only constant is the interminable sense of forward propulsion, driven primarily by the two full drum kits situated squarely in the center of the stage. Percussionists Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone are quite literally the beating heart of the evening, providing the incessant kinetic energy that infects the crowd and whips them into one big mosh pit from start to finish – no lulls or encore breaks, simply sheer perpetual motion.
Dwyer himself is constantly bouncing around as well, spending almost as much time airborne as he does on terra firma. He’s got the energy all people who front bands crave, to the point like it seems as if he physically could not bear to stand still as he plays. There’s plenty of psych-rock instrumental passages in the music of Osees and they afford him ample time to stalk back and forth between his immense amp and the front of the stage, sometimes re-approaching the crowd with a huge lunge, others tiptoeing back slowly with his instrument held to his shoulder like a rifle.
There’s a wildness behind Dwyer’s wide eyes and a crazed smile beneath the curled tips of his mustache that telegraphs the vibrant mind he possesses. Similar to oft-label-mates King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Dwyer and co. put out a massive number of records unconstrained by genre and fully unbothered by change, marrying inventive, fantastical names like Face Stabber, Orc, and ‘Lupine Ossuary’ to albums and songs that over the past 20 years have run the full gamut of sound, from the soft, lo-fi strums of something like Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion to the high energy punk- and funk-influenced composition of their more recent records like Protean Threat. With no easy genre label to saddle the band with besides “guitar music”, the best descriptors for the output of Osees are perhaps simply “otherworldly” and “inventive”.
Osees released three albums in 2020 and an EP this year, but their set showed a slight lean towards 2017’s Orc, a high point in their discography and one of the finest albums they’ve made since adopting the double-drummer approach both live and in studio. Even in songs from this one album the tones vary wildly, with a fuzzy wall of guitars coming to a keyboard-assisted crescendo in ‘The Static God’ courtesy of Tomas Dolas, while they explore a more metal-influenced, bass-led sound on ‘Animated Violence’ with Tim Hellman behind the four-string. Even seeing it right in front of you, it’s hard to believe that Dwyer is the sole guitarist of the band, the sheer volume, and energy of the music itself easily convincing the listener that this is much more than a five-piece. Dwyer has a bevy of effect pedals at his disposal and Dolas is situated behind a massive case that likely holds many more fun devices than just a keyboard.
Dwyer’s voice changes massively between songs as well, often gentle, airy, and high-pitched like the narration of some ambiguous deity; but occasionally becoming a guttural and animalistic snarl or a reverb-laden yelp at transitional points, like on ‘Toe Cutter / Thumb Buster’, a riff-heavy classic which he dedicates to the “old heads” out in the audience. Masked fans take to the air on the hands of their friends while the center of The Sinclair becomes probably the most intense pit the place has seen in nearly two years, everyone sweating bullets not least of all the band themselves, with Dwyer and Rincon tossing beads of moisture up in view of the spotlights with each and every motion by the end of the night.
While they’re not exactly a jam band, the band takes their time and stretches out the final pair of songs, ‘Encrypted Bounce’ and ‘C’. Dwyer, who has previously made a show of downing a beer in one gulp, departs the stage and returns with five more, opening each as the band grooves on. He then removes the cable from his guitar and spends a bit of time drawing circles on one of Rincon’s cymbals with it, eking out a strange but compelling tone from that little experiment, something they’ve no doubt messed around within the studio plenty, all before launching into the cascading bluesy, funky riffs of ‘C’ to end the night. Dwyer flashes a peace sign and waves farewell before exiting, and just about everyone takes a deep breath, relishing the aftermath of an experience most have not had in quite some time.