One sometimes finds oneself sitting in the front row of the chairs at the weird Rickshaw Theate. And one sometimes – rarely but wonderfully – finds oneself next to Mike Shoun, and babbling incoherently at Petey Dammit and Brigid Dawson from THEE OH SEES, while we all watched their openers.

Wait. Babbling? Really? (For a change.) But babbling is really the only method of communication possible whenst discussing my love for Thee Oh Sees live. Whether it’s John Dwyer drooling, bending and curving and pushing his guitar away from him like it has ALL THE COOTIES or Petey pounding out the bass with a speedy nodding head, or Mike absolutely dissolving his kit with a kind of precision that doesn’t seem possible while driving the rest, or Brigid watching her bandmates carefully to read their moves…Thee Oh Sees are a psychedelic fury.

It all started like a hot, sexy slap to the face with “I Come From the Mountain” and oozed through the grind of “Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster”. “Block of Ice”, “Lupine Dominus”, “Contraption/Soul Desert” and “The Dream” made the grey matter in our heads swirl. “Carrion Crawler” (from the EP of the same name) was a sinewy trip. From Floating Coffin, “Strawberry 1 & 2” was a frantic, full-horsepowered headbanger: “IIIIIIIIIIIIIII don’t readily know! ” we yelled. By dorky “I Need Seed” from Castlemania? We were all just grinning ear to ear. Check out the photos from this mental journey into crazy awesome (click on each to embiggen and scroll through). Thee Oh Sees: still worth babbling incoherently about. \m/