Thee Oh Sees - Putrifiers II - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

What's the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, speaker-smothering, tongue-wagging John Dwyer careening across your cranium, chased by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it's a nail in the coffin of what one thought it meant to make 21st century rock 'n' roll? Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point-how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been been to pin down since Dwyer launched it in the late '90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010's Warm Smile LP to the mercurial moods of 2008's the Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. And then there's the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania and the high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / the Dream, which dropped a second drum set among sunburnt organs, dovetailing guitars and rail-jumping rhythms. If one prefers a slightly more subtle musical awakening, there's always Putrifiers II, the latest in a long line of Oh Sees albums that expands the group's sound well past your friendly neighborhood garage band. So while the space-odyssey nods of InchWax FaceInch actually sound like they're meant to melt one's ears straight off, the record's full of deviant detours, from the poison-tipped string parts and Eno-esque engineering of InchSo NiceInch to the groove-locked Krautrock inclinations of InchLupine Dominus.Inch the most noticeable element may be Dwyer's melodies, however, as they reveal a softer side to his songwriting, one that makes perfect sense considering just how disparate his dust-clearing influences are. Scott Walker, the Velvet Underground, the Zombies and the experimental Japanese act Les Rallizes Denudes are bu