Thee OhSees, Sucks Blood

I hate to say it — and maybe it’s the sinus infection I’ve got talking, true — but Sucks Blood is mostly making the knives behind my eyes stab into my brain that much harder. I definitely admire Coachwhips/Pink & Brown guitarist John Dwyer for being able to funnel his garage-rawk/noise fixations down into the folkier, somewhat poppier songs he does with Thee Ohsees — there’s a lot more of The Kinks here than I’ve heard on Coachwhips records, for one thing — but damn, does it hurt.

Thee Ohsees apparently began life as Dwyer’s own home recording side project (they’ve since evolved into an actual band), and that feel still lingers in the lo-lo-lo-fi sound of the recordings on this disc. Each and every track practically skips with hisses and scratches, the instruments not so much on top but scraping thin layers of sound off as they go. It’s woozy, dirty, and halfway to psychedelic, like the dirty trailer-park cousin to that whole “freak-folk” movement. According to the Midheaven Mailorder site, the whole thing was produced by Sub Pop songster Kelley Stoltz using “all green energy,” and based on the music, I can’t tell if they’re talking sustainable power or the light from Green Lantern’s ring.

Sonically, Sucks Blood resembles the Velvets or more recent lo-fi-sters Comet Gain or The Kills (or, yes, pretty much any Billy Childish project), but the songs don’t have the cohesion of those bands; they feel like they’re in a constant state of falling apart. Tracks like “You Make Me Sick, Oh Yeah” and “What the Driven Drink” stumble and stagger around like a shipboard drunk, with little shreds of noise and airy sound skittering around around their heads. At points, there are some really nice notes here, like melody buried beneath “It Killed Mom,” the languid Grifters-ness of “Iceberg,” or the exuberant ’60s vibe of “Invitation,” but too many of the tracks just amble aimlessly in circles with no real destination in sight.

The capper comes halfway through the disc with “The Killer,” 1:30 of pointless, near-ambient noise weaving left to right and back again. Gah. I’m glad to have heard a handful of the tracks on here, definitely, but I’ll leave the rest to the Coachwhips fans out there. And hell, despite my grouchiness, I’d be willing to be the band’s pretty decent live…