Thee Oh Sees

Thee Oh Sees decided to ditch the stage in favour of playing in the packed crowd and conveniently beside the bar. This made the band impossible to see, especially through the throngs of rabid fans who crawled all over each other and climbed on top of speakers or chairs to catch a glimpse of this much-talked-about punk/folk/psych/whatever band from San Francisco. As the night went on, the sound of distortion got fuzzier and the crowd moshed close enough to the group that some even bathed in the splatter of front-man John Dwyer's sweat. And when a band is this awesome, it doesn't take the audience long to go 6's and 7's, at which point the crowd feverishly stormed the unused stage to get a better view and flail their limbs. This inversion is exactly the kind of hijinks you should come to expect from a band who play a rare breed of lo-fi, guitar-heavy, howling psych rock that will get an entire room thrashing, crowd surfing and tearing off their shirts. Needless to say, Thee Oh Sees left Montreal's speakers and minds sufficiently blown.