NEWS/NOISE NOISE
OH SAY CAN YOU SEES Brett Netson crafts complex work for the living.
MR. BIEBS UP IN YOUR TREEFORT Last week, we told you about an allBoise showcase at SXSW. This week, we get to tell you about equally exciting plans for the week after SXSW. After staging a SXSW mini-fest last year at Visual Arts Collective, Finn Riggins keyboardist Eric Gilbert decided to go all the way and stage a macrofest: the Treefort Music Festival. Treefort will be a multi-day, multi-venue festival in Boise, held the weekend after SXSW to catch bands on their way home from Austin. Expect BW to keep you posted as acts, venues and sponsors are confirmed. Until then, you’ll just have to get by with some juicy celeb gossip. A few weeks back, a paternity suit was filed against Justin Bieber (17), alleging that after a backstage encounter, he fathered the spawn of one Mariah Yeater, aged too old for him (20). J-Bizzle denied the charges, saying that he’d never even met the woman, and that he always goes immediately to his car after performances, leaving no time for groupie-groping. Well it looks like the good name of Mr. Biebs is once again squeaky clean, because Yeater’s lawyers dropped the suit (possibly because Bieber’s balls haven’t?). According to US Magazine, Bieber has agreed to take a paternity test regardless. Bieber’s opposite—in both sonic and facial hair preferences—is Boise’s own Brett Netson. The Built to Spill bassist and architect of Caustic Resin has been kicking holes in reality onstage with his new psychedelic doom group, The Brett Netson Band, for the last few months. And this week, that schizzle hit wax. The Brett Netson Band’s debut LP, Simple Work for the Dead, was released Tuesday, Nov. 22, and features a grip of songs and ideas Netson has been working on for years. Netson plays most of the instruments on the album himself. Fellow hair-enthusiast Ozzy Osbourne is in the news this week because he and the other members of Black Sabbath announced that they will be making a new album together for the first time since 1978. The album will be produced by Rick Rubin and should be available in fall of 2012. And finally, some upstart company called Google launched a music service this week. Google Music is making a play for the Apple iTunes Store’s share of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Google Music will offer downloads, cloud storage of up to 20,000 songs and tie-ins to the Google + social-networking platform. —Josh Gross
22 | NOVEMBER 23–29, 2011 | BOISEweekly
San Francisco garage rockers Thee Oh Sees channel monsters and dreams STEPHEN FOSTER Thee Oh Sees emerged from the San Francisco underground nearly a decade ago with a gritty, psychedelic garage rock sound. The band’s music is fast, fuzzy, informal, colored with clever and humorous lyrics, inundated with reverb and rough around the edges. But it has a soft, gooey center. And at that center is Brigid Dawson, the band’s keyboard player, who tempers raucous frontman John Dwyer’s distorted guitars and The Oh Sees hope not to make a spectacle of themselves at Flying M Coffeegarage. intense antics with her smooth piano and organ melodies. the Sierra Nevadas, the amazing produce … It’s a really great place.” The band’s impressive history includes Carrion Crawler/The Dream is not a douall the history, the Beat poets and the entire countless shows, 20 or so full-lengths and ble LP, and it’s not two EPs packaged in one EPs, and performances atop some of the larg- psychedelic-drug-taking-anarchist-rebel hissleeve—it’s one album with two names. The est festival stages in the country. On Monday, tory that’s there. That kind of shapes every first half of the album’s name was inspired band that’s from our town.” Nov. 28, Thee Oh Sees will add Flying M by a monster, which fits well with Thee Oh This anarchistic, free-for-all mentality Coffeegarage in Nampa to that list. Dawson recently spoke with Boise Week- informs Thee Oh Sees’ approach to its craft. Sees’ uncanny, often-spooky low-fi vibes. “When we were kids, we played DunIn the studio, everything is off the cuff. ly and elaborated on some of that history. “We record really quickly, and we record geons and Dragons, and there’s a book “About 10 years ago or more, John called the Fiend Folio, which is amazing,” almost everything totally live,” said Dawstarted doing this band, OCS, as kind of Dawson said. “It’s this illustrated book that son. “There might be, like, the occasional a home-recording project,” said Dawson. flute overdub or something like that, but the describes all of the monsters you can use in “And so you have the first two albums, the game, which is like a role-playing game process is really quick for us.” which are purely him really, and then you basically, pre-video games and all of that And this approach pays off. In the last have albums three and four, which is where shit. And Carrion Crawler is a monster from six months, Thee Oh Sees has released two our old drummer and saw player, Patrick albums—Castlemania and Carrion Crawler/ the Fiend Folio.” Mullins, joins the band. I joined six years Aside from its enchantment with DunThe Dream. Both albums contain the band’s ago when I was playing with Patrick. We geons and Dragons, Thee Oh Sees is known hallmarks: retro pop, low-fi haze, distorted changed the name to Thee Oh Sees when vocal harmonies, crunchy guitars and abra- for its monstrous live shows. The band’s [guitarist Petey Dammit] joined the band, chunky riffs and dirty guitar solos are delivsive solos. which was about a year after I did.” ered loud and clear, with Dawson’s superb “[Castlemania] is mostly just John San Francisco plays an integral role in the keyboard playing and backup vocal duties writing at home and quintet’s history and providing an additional layer of charm to playing all the instruaesthetic. The city ments. Then he took it the quintet’s lofty, in-your-face performance has a storied musical style. The group recently added an extra to the studio to overpast, no doubt. From With Total Control and Art Fad, Monday, Nov. 28, 8 p.m., $5 dub, master and mix it drummer, giving more weight to its chugquintessential ’60s ging backbeat. there,” said Dawson. psych bands like The FLYING M COFFEEGARAGE When asked about the band’s live “Stylistically it’s softer, Grateful Dead and 1314 Second Street South, Nampa 208-467-5533 performances, Dawson was overly modest, it’s janglier. And then Carlos Santana, to flyingmcoffee.com saying only, “I just hope we don’t embarrass [Carrion Crawler/The the early punk rock ourselves.” Dream] is definitely of The Dead KenWhether it’s thrilling live shows, D&D, clearly a full band nedys and Alternative the wide-open Pacific Ocean or the musialbum that’s harder Tentacles, the Bay but still really melodic, which is something I cal history of San Francisco, Thee Oh Sees Area’s laid-back vibe and openness toward makes art by absorbing its surroundings and diversity has always provided a fertile milieu like about the album.” interpreting them with sound. The band recorded the entirety of Carrifor budding artists. This hallowed ground is “Music is such a product of everything on Crawler/The Dream in less than a week. where Thee Oh Sees forged its sound. that you are,” said Dawson. “I don’t even “I think we had five days to record, “There’s such a great live music scene know if you can be that clinical about it. which is the longest we’ve ever had to and so many good musicians in San FranLittle things that you love will just come record,” said Dawson. “We slept there. cisco—lots of people trying new stuff,” out—the things that you are fascinated by There’s a kitchen there, so we made a said Dawson. “There’s also the great wide right now. I think it’s a natural process, a couple of really great meals. … The studio open vista of the Pacific Ocean right there, has tons of old organs and beautiful guitars. pretty organic thing.” beautiful Redwood forests behind you and WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M