OH SEES / PRETTIEST EYES | LIVE REVIEW
Tramshed, Cardiff, Thurs 23 May
Californian trio Prettiest Eyes, tonight’s main support and labelmates of the Oh Sees on John Dwyer’s own Castle Face roster, eschew the May sunlight for dark synth punk, but make the whole shebang seem like a lot of fun. Singing drummer Pachy Garcia’s distorted vox are like a blend of Perry Farrell and Alan Vega, while the preacher-hatted bass player struts and duckwalks across the stage, and Paco Casanova shakes his longhaired locks behind the electronics.
Primed to release their third album, the band pay a heavy debt to Suicide, with the Ghost Rider nuclear fallout of Nekrodisco, while Sorry also has that mutant Hammond pulse and reverb. Don’t Call is akin to Devo pulverising the B52s’ Rock Lobster with murderous motorik bass; Johnny Come Home is decaying industrial disco, Ready To Go Big Black’s Cables all twisted up and corroded.
It’s as hard to pigeonhole an Oh Sees fan as it is to pin down their sound, or even their name or lineup, which is ever evolving, album to album, throwing down lo-fi, garage rock, synth-led prog, psychedelia and even full-on thrash metal, sometimes all crammed into one thrilling tune. Plastic Plant is a fine opener, celebrated with plastic cups thrown into the air, some full and drenching the teeming, seething mass of a moshpit, at least 10 rows deep.
That’s followed by the synth funk of Nite Expo from 2017’s Orc album, with its squirty Stranglers keyboard chorus, alternating with some fine sorties of vicious thrashing, and Tim Hellman’s modal pulsing bass and propulsive drums. Their most conventional tune follows, Tidal Wave, a groovy Black Keys-primitive garage blues which soundtracked a Breaking Bad episode. The well-known Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster sticks pretty close to the conventional quiet/loud fuzzy grunge dynamic, with Dwyer’s falsetto placing this close to a Kim Deal number off Surfer Rosa.
Besides that, Animated Violence was aired, with the umpteenth crowd surfer spreading their limbs in praise to the Sabbath riffs while Dwyer shakes his mop like a feral Beatle, in between bellowing the deep HEAVY METAL vocals, before the cascading drum fills unfurl into a sassy groove, topped with Dwyer’s oohwahs. While his transparent Gibson guitar is expertly handled, slung high like a sitar, Dwyer’s demeanour is inscrutable, and patter minimal, with only the occasional “Thank you Cardiff” uttered.
More recent songs are really pushing the envelope, with the funky psyche of Jettisoned from Orc and the tranquil start of Sentient Oona – like a distant cousin of Can’s Vitamin C, with its atmospheric keyboards and busy, Liebezeit-jazzy drums punctuated by Hendrix guitar squalls and Brian Auger Hammond licks. There’s a handful of songs extended into long jams, including the final number, Encrypted Bounce from Drop, a psych-rock chug mutating into a wigout, with drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone metronomically beating out a Goldiesque drum and bass tattoo, and Dwyer leading the band, tweaking the oscillators from time to time before circling back like a vulture to the rowdy guitar riff, 10-plus minutes later, for the moshpit to rouse themselves one last time.
words CHRIS SEAL photos EMMA LEWIS