Protean Threat

Album review

When a band have released as many albums as Thee Oh Sees, or as they are known now Osees, it would make sense that occasionally they would put out a dog, or at the very least some fraying around the edges may start to show. John Dwyer and his crew show no signs of letdown, burnout, or stagnation on 2020's Protean Threat, the group's 300th record, more or less. It's just as weird, fiery, hooky, strange, and avant-punk as anything they've released; the unbroken hot streak they're on continues to throw off sparks like an overheating amp that's about to catch fire. Their last couple records took the band's formula and twisted it into complex, proggy shapes, sometimes stretching the songs long past the punk-approved three-minute time limit. Here, the group stuff all their experimental exploration into much shorter songs, invest them with some real-world lyric concerns, and inject most of them with rocket fuel. Much of the album has the jagged, buzzing insanity of early Oh Sees records, but where those records were blasts of noise, here the jazz and prog influences the band have gotten into so deeply invest the songs with a chewy oddness that helps them hit harder than they might otherwise.
The album kicks off with a couple songs that scrape the ceiling with their intensity and untamed energy. "Scramble Suit" has thrillingly abrasive jolts of static, and on the herky-jerky "Dreary Nonsense" the swirling guitars sound like two avant-garde saxophonists battling to a breathless draw. After this assault on the senses, they immediately pull back on the throttle with a pair of creepy-crawly midtempo jams -- "Upbeat Ritual" and "Red Study" -- that trade out the skronk in favor of a malevolent restraint. The rest of the record jumps between these two sides of the garage-prog scale. Tracks like "Mizmuth" and "Persuaders Up!" peel the paint from the walls with the fuzz-sharpened guitars, pummeling double-drum attack, and Dwyer's yelped vocals, while the synth-damaged "Wing Run" and the wizardly proggy "If I Had My Way" sneak into the pleasure center of the brain quietly instead of knocking the door right down. The band are equally adept at both -- as they have proven over and over -- and only seem to be getting better as they absorb more influences and subvert them to their own purposes. Protean Threat is their most focused and intense record in a few years and the change is welcome, like a deep breath after a long battle scene. Speaking of that, it's definitely a struggle to make good, verging on great, records over a long career; most bands fold like a tomato can facing Ali, but the Osees are winning with ease.

© Tim Sendra /TiVo