Osees bring their energy to O2 Ritz Manchester
The band put on a show to remember.
Photo: Adam Edwards
On May 3rd 2013, Thee Oh Sees (as they were then known) played at The Kazimier in Liverpool as part of that year’s Sound City Festival. The venue, potentially my favourite venue ever, was a perfect stage for the band’s vibrancy, volume, and energy. It was a gig that has passed down in contemporary folklore, the Lesser Free Trade Hall moment of the (admittedly niche) Merseyside psychedelic scene of the 2010s. I mention all this because that night I wasn’t there. I was at a different stage of the festival and missed it; it’s rankled ever since.
Over twelve years later, the opportunity finally rolled around again: now known as Osees, playing the O2 Ritz Manchester on a Monday night.
If you’re not familiar with the band, they’re likely placed somewhere on a Venn diagram of garage rock, psych rock, surrealism and noise. And they sound absolutely amazing.
After a refreshingly DIY few minutes with the band members actually setting up their own equipment, the band open with Withered Hand, Ticklish Warrior, and Toe Cutter-Thumb Buster. The latter is this writer’s favourite track of theirs and, for a lot of bands, would be the end-of-show epic to go out on. That Osees can throw it in the opening songs shows the strength and depth of their discography.
From the bassline crescendo of the opening song, the band simply do not stop. They’re in sync, they’re loud, and the crowd responds — by the time the less-psych-more-just-hardcore Funeral Solution is played, there’s a good, healthy pit taking up a chunk of the floor, and crowd surfers are taking their positions up high.
This incarnation of the band is a quintet with, naturally, two drummers. Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone have been behind their respective kits together for around eight years now, and it shows, as they perfectly complement each other all night. Slightly different styles and fills, but mostly playing the same beats, they’re tight as anything and at no point do two drummers appear superfluous. Tim Hellman (bass) and Tomas Dolas (keys) are the driving, reliable foundations for the music to build upon.
It’s frontman and founder John Dwyer who steals the show, though. For the whole night, he’s a masculine blur; jumping, head-banging, often holding his guitar chest-height like a gun as if he’s playing laser tag with his kids. Yet, like the rest of the band, he doesn’t miss a note and keeps the vacuum inside the venue intact for the entire gig.
Osees are also incredibly prolific, and their setlist comes from roughly fourteen different albums. The vibe of the show never dips, though, and the energy of the band is the golden thread throughout the whole 90 minutes they’re on stage. It’s sweaty, loud, and intense, in the best ways possible.
Scuzzy DJ Container had opened the show with his dirty, dubstep-esque beats, which warmed the crowd up a little, despite the apparently jarring genres on the bill.
But it was an entirely triumphant return to the northwest for Osees, which stole the show and, likely, the coveted Gig of the Year mantle for most of those in the audience.
All photos by Adam Edwards.