THEE OH SEES - Off Course

After thirty years of activity, discussing John Dwyer's extraordinary productivity has become almost beside the point. Every year, Osees release enough music to fuel entire underground scenes, and the real paradox is that they rarely seem to repeat themselves. In recent years, we've watched them morph into proto-metal warriors, synth-punk fanatics, hardcore saboteurs and noise mercenaries, but "OFF COURSE" pulls off an even more surprising move: it slows down the frontal assault and returns to something looser, more organic, almost accidental.
This record was born out of the reworking of a handful of jam sessions, and you can feel it immediately. There's no set writing, no precise map — it's a discovery made along a cosmic journey, rediscovering the pleasure of error, drift and deviation.

The title track opens the record like a transmission from space: the first guitars conjure the cosmic ghosts of "Astronomy Domine" by Pink Floyd, but the song soon shifts shape. Melodies surface and vanish like mirages, while the double drumming of Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone builds a kind of hypnotic highway that keeps pushing forward regardless of everything else. And this is exactly where the heart of the album lies: for once, Dwyer isn't really the main character. Tim Hellman's bass and the constant dialogue between the two drummers become the record's true narrative engine. Their rhythms, deeply indebted to both kraut-rock and afrobeat pulses, generate an almost physical sensation of perpetual motion.

"Hecate's Reflection Is A Trick" is probably the aesthetic manifesto of the whole project. Metallic bells, psychedelic organs, percussion multiplying endlessly, and vocals reduced to a rhythmic element. "OFF COURSE" reaches trance states rarely explored by recent Osees, along with something deeply playful — a quality that in the band's latest work had often been sacrificed on the altar of sonic aggression and speed. Even the closer, "The Brute On His Knees", feels almost like a provocation: a long, organ-dominated epilogue that looks simultaneously to British progressive rock, psychedelic garage, and a certain gothic melancholy.
While some contemporary psychedelic bands use the jam as an aesthetic, here Osees use it as a method of exploration. And with "OFF COURSE", John Dwyer and co. seem to remind us that some of the most interesting discoveries happen when you stop asking where you're going and simply start following the groove.

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14/07/2026