Thee Oh Sees Get All Sweaty in Eagle Rock

Thee Oh Sees' spazzy-punk frontman John Dwyer took a couple breaths between songs Friday night to play with the crowd. “There's a farty smell in here,” he spit out, grossing out the girls. “Whoever did that . . . cut it out.”

Thee Oh Sees; Credit: photo by Wendy Gilmartin

Pink and Brown and Coachwhips' alumni John Dwyer is real comfortable with the kind of scene that went down in Eagle Rock Friday. While he naturally knows how to force-feed the kids in the pit with screeching, careening riffs, Dwyer & Co. also are experts at packing a walloping wall of shivering feedback, which mostly comes from his beastly 12-string.

With Dwyer egging on the crowd using his echo chamber vocals and super-fast, bobble head moves, the mic stands and beer cups were flying and the speakers were practically tumbling over – two guys on each side of the stage had to hold them up for the rest of the show. Then Dwyer halted, “Who's got more Coronas?”

Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer: 12-string not shown here; Credit: photo by Wendy Gilmartin

Even though there were plenty of broken glasses and stepped on beanies in the indie-nerd mosh, Thee Oh Sees kept blasting it out – around a dozen busting-at-the-seams, fuzzed out, scull-crashing numbers, as always with an electronic rockabilly punk jive (think the Cramps making it with Jay Reatard).

More Coronas; Credit: photo by Wendy Gilmartin

Dom; Credit: photo by Wendy Gilmartin

Boston's party-punk skatekids Dom opened the show and had more effect over all the done-up ladies looking Dum Dum Girls clones, than Thee Oh Sees did. They were playing a lot of tracks from their EP – Sun Bronzed Greek Gods – a hit list of hard and fast reverb-soaked quickies, with singer Dominic (no last name, kinda like Cher) doing his best Ronnie Spector girl-group impression.

Dom; Credit: photo by Wendy Gilmartin

Sun Bronzed Greek Gods they are not. But Dom are major band-guy cuties, with a couldn't-care-less approach to their fun songs like “Hunny”, “Jesus” and “Living in America.” It'd be easy to compare Dom to bands like Girls and Best Coast, and wonder if they're gonna make it big and go far like those acts, but these guys probably don't give a shit about that. For last night's show it was just brews, loud guitars, a bit of crowd surfing, a little dancing, sharing a cig outside and onto the next party.

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