Don't let the fact that John Dwyer is always releasing new music trick you into taking him for granted. In the first half of this year, the California psychedelic garage-punk king has already launched the new side project Heathen Axe, released a new album under his solo guise Damaged Bug, and dropped a surprise EP from his best-known band, Osees. And now we get a whole new Osees LP too.
Off Course, the new Osees record out today, is only five tracks, but some of them are long, and Dwyer is calling it an album. It certainly takes you on a journey the way good albums do. The songs are playful, funky, and hallucinatory in a way that reminds me how much King Gizzard owes to this crew. Dwyer says it emerged from endless jam sessions, a method the Osees hadn't employed for a while:
We went back to an older method of writing for this one.
We jammed and jammed and jammed.
I took the tapes home and ironed out some mutant tunes.
We went back into the studio and burned them to tape live and then I took it home
to Stu-Stu-Studio and did the vocals and brought in Tom Dolas & Brigid Dawson to put the finish on.
Spice is always nice.Mixed it all up in the cauldron and thus we have a strange brew indeed
Floating in the smoke we have:
A couple long jams, a couple short jams and a finale that’ll dump a bucket of ear worms on you
(reminiscent of “the axis”?)
Dip your toe in organ rock and rollSo without further ado
We present to you
“OFF COURSE”
An album wondering where the fuck are we and how did we get hereA signal dispatched out into the darkness
We are here
We are alive
And we are togetherCHEERS NO EARS
JPD/DG/OSEES
Listen below.
Off Course is out now on Deathgod. Buy it here.
