How Much I Don’t Need You

Thee Oh Sees “The Axis”

Let’s skip ahead in this song and focus on the ending, in which John Dwyer plays a guitar solo that starts off as compelling yet fairly standard shredding, but gradually shifts until it sounds like the notes are literally shredding. It’s a beautifully ugly sound, and it’s the perfect, magnificently cathartic conclusion to a song in which he spends a lot of time moaning questions like “don’t you know how much I don’t love?” in an uncharacteristically inert voice. You don’t really ask a question like that if it’s not at least somewhat untrue, and that guitar bit at the end is like him saying “You know what? I do love you, but fuck that and fuck you –– I’m outta here!” and slamming the door behind him.

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