John Dwyer's numerous past projects—
Pink & Brown and Coachwhips among them—have proved him an utterly
spastic rock stylist. Change remains the constant with Thee Oh
Sees, a.k.a. OCS and The Ohsees. Granted, this isn't the first time Dwyer has put on a hard hat and set
about deconstructing garage-rock. But Thee Oh Sees' new The Master's
Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In is much more than an experiment in devolving an
already primitive genre. The opener, "Block Of Ice," recalls early B-52s with
its boy-girl call-and-response, and "Ghost In The Trees" rides a surf-rock
pulse before phoning in sweet, garbled vocals and barbed-wire guitar. Dwyer's
sloppiness is sophisticated—aware and wary of post-Billy Childish cliché,
his band puts just enough of a spin (and sheets of hellish echo) on each jagged
riff and Mark E. Smith-like harangue. Everyone from The Gories to Jay Reatard
has attempted a similarly scrambled approach to garage-rock, but tracks like
the acidly tangy "Grease" reveal The Master's Bedroom to be the rarest of
records: a pure pop album with a deep lust for noise, dirt, and the diseased
underbelly of the rock 'n' roll canon.