OCS
Live at Permanent Records
ROCK IS HELL
Keeping up with John Dwyer’s exponentially growing discography is like trying to drink from a firehose, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. The Grateful Dead shat out 13 studio albums and 77 concert recordings during the 30 years they were active. Guided by Voices, arguably the most prolific indie-rock band ever, have issued 40 studio full-lengths (though only a modest two live releases) since forming in 1983. And then there’s Dwyer, apparently trying to outdo the Dead and GBV in quantifiable terms, like Aaron Judge did when he was outdone by baseball megastars Roger Maris and Babe Ruth for most homers hit in a single season. He’s now up to 28 studio albums and a pair of live records, most notably last year’s Live at Levitation, a 40-minute capsule that proved Dwyer is such a skilled musician and songwriter that he doesn’t need to lean on the crutch of quantity to prove he’s one of today’s top purveyors of quality psych-noise.
Yet just over a year later, he’s churned out another concert document, Live at Permanent Records, which contains 23 tracks and runs about 70 minutes. Whereas Levitation presented Oh Sees’ best self (regardless of how Dwyer chooses to spell the band name—in the case of this release reviving the OCS moniker indicating his early lo-fi recordings with former band member Brigid Dawson last heard on 2017’s Memory of a Cut Off Head and its ensuing live album), this recording captures for posterity the glass-half-empty version of the band, which here features Dawson performing vocals, tambourine, and the droning Indian shruti box alongside Dwyer. “It’s only going to get worse from here,” Dwyer snickers after the opening track, “Dreadful Heart”—as if he foresaw how much truth was contained in what was likely a sarcastic remark.
Intended to be a special collection containing songs that OCS rarely play in concert, the sound quality (true to the sound quality of many of these songs’ original versions) is shoddy at best; the first 45 minutes are predominantly acoustic, but the last 25 sound so torturously rough, you’d swear they were pulled from a bootleg recording a fan made with a cassette recorder in their pocket. Permanent Records is so sonically abominable—and the performances so sloppy—that it would actually drive latter-day Oh Sees–curious music fans away from wanting to see them in concert, where Dwyer’s manic genius—undeniably his greatest strength—is on full, engrossing display.
In June of last year, Red Lobster decided to make its Ultimate Endless Shrimp option a permanent addition to its menu. It initially cost $20, but within mere months, the chain got battered (pun very much intended) by tumbling profits and was forced to raise the price to $22, then to $25. But it was too late; the damage had already been done to the chain’s bottom line (and far too many Americans’ health). The company went bankrupt mere months later. Dear John, please don’t become the Red Lobster of contemporary rock.
