Warm Slime

Album Review

For a band that sound as if they subsist on a steady diet of cheap hallucinogens, Thee Oh Sees are an admirably ambitious bunch; Warm Slime is the fourth album in three years from John Dwyer and his roving band of psychedelic marauders, and if the liner notes are to be believed, they committed this album to tape in a single day in 2009. The semi-finished product lacks a certain amount in the way of precision and polish, but Thee Oh Sees were clearly together enough to make this stuff stick once the tape began to roll. The title track clocks in at 13-and-a-half minutes, and though Dwyer could have given himself plenty of room for fractured guitar bashing, instead he allows the song's insistent pulse to take over, and the throbbing groove carries it along with hypnotic effect even when the melody drifts off into the ether. The other six songs clock in at more traditional pop-single length, though with Dwyer and Petey Dammit's layers of thick, ringing guitar tone, Michael Wayne Shoun's furious drumming, and Brigid Dawson's low-tech keyboards this band can pack as much freak power into three minutes as other acts can summon in 30. And while "Warm Slime" gives Thee Oh Sees a chance to stretch their legs and explore their aural cosmos, the other selections reveal that they can write simple but indelibly catchy tunes when the mood strikes them, and the notion must have occurred to someone the day they cut this disc. Like the title suggests, Warm Slime is gooey but curiously inviting stuff, and sinking into it might not be the safest way to pass the time, but it's a genuinely pleasurable experience.