I have this funny reaction to garage rock. If it's loud and noisy enough, it's a bit like it punches me right in the face. It forces me to take notice, and I become infatuated with it for a little bit until I make myself sick of it by overplaying it. This is what happened between me and White Denim's Fits. I just listened to it over and over and over, which I actually attest to a year ago (a working search function is awesome), and I think I'm on the cusp of doing it with this Warm Slime album by Thee Oh Sees.

Thee Oh Sees, who aren't from OC but San Fransisco. I actually discovered this band because of a paid iPad app called Discovr, which I should probably review for my other site. Discovr shows you nifty little related band balloons, similar to a Last.FM visualizer I remember using years ago, but their database of artists seems to be really good---Last.FM has never recommended Thee Oh Sees to me, so that right there makes me think Discovr is worth the money.

With that out of the way... Thee Oh Sees have a sound that I'd place somewhere between The Strange Boys and Archie Bronson Outfit's last album. On "Warm Slime" (the title track) they start off on the precipice of noise rock and then dial it down into a slow burn groove, which then they stretch out for about 10 minutes using basically all the same techniques "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" did---I wouldn't be surprised if that was the band's inspiration. It gets quiet, it gets loud, there's whistling at some point, cuts down to just bass and vocal, tempo changes, etc. It's all there and, dare I say it, it's totally awesome. It's so... organic! You can hear that when the drummer picks the tempo up that the guitarists take a second to catch up. This is a band playing live! And they're tearing it up!

Man, it's too bad that song is 13 minutes, because otherwise I'd post it. Instead you get track two, "I Was Denied", which is their least noisy and most straight forward song on the album. It sounds a bit like a lot of different songs from the 70's, and I guess that's a solid compliment. The album as a whole varies between experimental/noisy and solid jams/grooves that make for great hooks. It's only the last song that makes my head throb a little bit. "Warm Slime" itself is the star of the show, and probably worth the price of admission just by itself.