Oh Sees

Protean Threat

OSees are skipping across a plethora of musical touchstones, and continuing to blaze their own trail as expansive psych-rock pioneers.

Much of the album has the jagged, buzzing insanity of early Oh Sees records, but where those records were blasts of noise, here the jazz and prog influences the band have gotten into so deeply invest the songs with a chewy oddness that helps them hit harder than they might otherwise.

The tracks do not feel truncated. In stripping the indulgences back, the band delivers the best aspects of their fuzzy guitar freakouts without sacrificing the groove-based jams.

Even though Protean Threat proves to be an adventurous, quirky and downright strange album at times, Osees manage keep the whole thing sonically grounded and consumable, all while keeping Dwyer's winning streak impossibly alive.

The restless vigour of Protean Threat ... testifies to the invigorating properties of that breakfast of champions.

There will be moments at which you'll wonder which parts of this wildly diverse album you’re actually supposed to be enjoying, but it's certainly never boring.

It all adds up to an intelligent, uneven, and unpredictable record that, as self-indulgent and challenging as it might be, is also a sincerely weird joy to listen to.

While a lot trimmer than the preceding Face Stabber, Protean Threat is about as hit-and-miss.

Through the surprisingly-short length of their twenty-third studio album, Protean Threat, Osees explore a variety of different genre-splicing ideas, and continue making quality rock music. The issue comes with its inability to focus on one solidified style, or one solidified theme, that could potentially tie the project together.