Ridiculously, fabulously prolific, San Francisco's garage-rock kingpins seem to release a record each full moon. (EPs show up on the half-moon.) Lesser bands might think twice about exactly how to follow up 2009's Help - a title that earned high marks all around - but John Dwyer and his intrepid band mates are fearless. Yes, the 13-minute opening track stretches before you, like a dark chasm of unknown depths, but you faithfully leap in, to be richly rewarded: "Warm Slime" chugs and oozes and churns, and two minutes in, the tune morphs into a soul-stomping blues riff, only to slowly strip down to a barebones groove. By song's end, several permutations have taken place, and each one mesmerizes. (Once you're in, there's no going back.) It's trip-rock for the 2000s, and due to either sheer chutzpah or wily cunning, Thee Oh Sees are one of very few bands willing to put a track like that up front and center. The brilliant, bombastic "Castiatic Tackle" and "Mega-Feast" or the noisily gleeful "I Was Denied" would all likely be opening tracks if the band ever did what's expected. Happily, they don't. Hallelujah.
