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Osees are John Dwyer's long-running psych machine, the San Francisco garage-punk project (going as Thee Oh Sees when this dropped) that has cranked out two dozen-plus records and built a reputation on some of the most ferocious live shows going. By 2015 the band had locked into a heavy, riff-forward lineup: Dwyer on guitar, vocals and synths, Tim Hellman on bass, Nick Murray on drums, with Chris Woodhouse adding Mellotron and Brigid Dawson on backing vocals. Released on Dwyer's own Castle Face, Mutilator Defeated at Last takes the monolithic weight of Floating Coffin and laces it with organ, acoustic guitar and proper psychedelic detail.
We go way back with this band. Osees played our very first year as Austin Psych Fest in 2012, then came back for Levitation in 2015, 2018, 2022 and 2024. Few artists have shaped the festival the way Dwyer's crew has, so pressing this one as a Levitation Edition feels less like a release and more like a homecoming.
This is Osees at their most punishing and most patient. The riffs hit like cinder blocks, but what keeps Mutilator Defeated at Last on the platter is everything around them: the organ swells, the delay trails, the acoustic passages that crack the heaviness open just long enough to breathe before the next motorik charge. Dwyer threads dread and beauty in the same measure, and the Hellman/Murray rhythm section gives it a low-end gravity the earlier records only hinted at.
Pitchfork landed on it too, calling it a focused, heavy entry with tasteful psychedelic touches and handing it a 7.8. We hear that. If we have one quibble, the back half leans on the bludgeon a beat longer than the front, and a couple of the longer cuts could lose a verse and lose nothing.
None of that dents the case for the wax. This is the sound of a band at full power, and these pressings (the Halloween orange splatter, the kelly green and beer) are exactly the kind of object a record like this deserves. Loud, strange and built to last.
Recommended if you like: Ty Segall, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, WAND.
