All Your Sweet Life

Thee Oh Sees “Savage Victory”

I saw Thee Oh Sees for the first time last night, and I came away from the show feeling like I truly understood the band in way I hadn’t before. My grasp on the band’s dynamics were pretty hazy going in, to the point that I had assumed a woman sang a lot of the parts that John Dwyer actually sings in falsetto. But beyond that, witnessing Dwyer in action makes everything about the music click into focus – it’s all very physical and joyful; the act of playing music as this tactile, athletic expression. Dwyer plays his guitar the way I always wish I could, with this loose-limbed nonchalance and that thing where a guitarist will just do some cool gesture than results in a cool sound and it doesn’t totally make sense. Just like Stephen Malkmus, he makes playing guitar look extremely easy, and also totally unfathomable. Dwyer’s natural ease is crucial to the band’s entire aesthetic – even when the songs are very structured, it all feels very intuitive and alive in the moment.

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