I’d first heard Thee Oh Sees back in 2012 when I was working at a record shop in London and they released their Putrifiers ii album. The album had gripped me from its opening track ‘Wax Face’. It was a sound I’d been wanting to hear, I knew something like that was out there but I’d never been able to find it. My limited NME knowledge of UK indie bands didn’t come anywhere near to the sound I’d been longing for. It had sparked something in the angsty teenager in me at the time, and after Thee Oh Sees, everything I listened to needed to sound like them. It led to me discovering artists like Ty Segal and Jay Retard. From there, it was these bands that shaped the musical world around me. You can imagine the painful five year wait until I would finally get to see the band that started it all for me.

The show was announced in February, originally billed to be at Brighton’s Clarendon Centre which raised many questions at the time as the venue just seemed impossible, due to the band that Thee Oh Sees are. For a number of reasons, the Clarendon Centre was deemed unsuitable and the venue changed to Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion, which caused concern given its distance from the originally billed venue. However, with a coach service organised all was back on track. With hindsight the venue change, although out of the way, created the perfect setting for a show which will stay with me for a very long time. The hour long trip to the venue created a huge sense of occasion around the show. Fans were all in buses together and most were being taken to the De La Warr for the first time. Arriving there, it was instantly perfect, this slightly run down art deco theatre was exactly where you would imagine seeing a band like Thee Oh Sees, the room they were playing in felt like the right room. It was understated but able to house the right number of eager fans.

Getting as close to the front as I could, the band came on. Although there’s no acknowledgement from them at this point, they’re busy sound checking. They start jamming and doing their sound check at the same time whilst people are still unsure if the show is starting yet. After a minute or so they fire things up with ‘Plastic Plant’ and the room turns frantic. About a third of the venue dissolves into moshing and crowd-surfing. The build-up for the show spills out in the room and the band deliver and smash every expectation. Their line-up now includes two drummers and throughout the show they drum in perfect sync, creating a huge sound and drum beats that you can feel hitting you. At no point is the bar lowered and the crowd never stops for a breather either. All the elements of their psychedelic, garage punk sound which people fell in love with transfer brilliantly into a larger room.

John Dywer’s guitar sounds nothing short of perfect. It’s that instantly recognisable sound of his, only bigger. His guitar, which keeps the thin tinnyness to it, fills up the room and every note rings through. The bass sound provides a deep edge and perfectly fills out the remaining space serving as an ideal counterpart. Along with this the drummers build a huge sound and stay perfectly in time throughout the show creating a huge thick sound.

Specific highlights are ‘Wax Face’ and ‘I Come From The Mountain’ which are both opening tracks from the albums Purifiers ii and Floating Coffin. These tracks are particularly exciting, they capture the sound of the band and, in the context of the albums, these songs sum up exactly where the band are at musically. Hearing them in a live context creates the same excitement that comes with putting on an album by the band for the first time.

Towards the end of the show myself and the rest of the room are battered, it’s been a sweaty and a hugely anticipated one. For myself, I’d been waiting for this show since 2012 when I first heard them. For some the changes and the organised chaos leading to the event will have been an inconvenience but I imagine for the majority it made the show all the more special.
Chris Middleton

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