Nearly 1000 jumping bodies swallowed the Englert Theatre’s seated layout during the Saturday night performance from psychedelic rock band Osees, the Mission Creek Festival’s closing headliner. But the nature of the Osees’ sound and energy required this.
“Is everyone okay at this vintage theatre?” The inked-up lead guitarist and vocalist John Dwyer polled the crowd after the first song.
Formed in 1997 in San Francisco, the band was originally a solo project of Dwyers’ before he expanded into the now-Osees. Over the years, the band released 26 studio albums using multiple iterations of their current name: Orinoka Crash Suite, OCS, Orange County Sound, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees, Thee Oh Sees, Oh Sees, and most recently, Osees.
In a 2022 interview with the Aquarium Drunkard, Dwyer explained the band’s habitual name changes as an anti-music press decision.
Consisting of Dwyer, side-by-side drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone, beating their sets with such force you’d have thought they were doing it out of spite — and with an endurance that would’ve satisfied J.K. Simmon’s character in “Whiplash” — the barefoot bassist Timothy Hellman, keyboardist Tomas Dolas, the Osees brought a vibe to the Englert reminiscent of invite-only basement shows.
Rincon’s t-shirt, which read “Infest” in big, bold letters, prophesied the swarm of fans that crowded the base of the stage once the band took their place centerstage.
Though bouncing and hair swinging for the entire duration of the band’s 95-minute-long set, the shoulder-to-shoulder audience seemed to have an endless supply of energy devoted to the band’s music. Perhaps it was the water splashed across the frontmost audience that kept them alert, or the few who crowd-surfed.
“This one’s for you, maniac,” Dwyer said to an audience member before indulging in another brain-melting song.
Whether emotionally intelligent or emotionally belligerent, their songs made for a ridiculously interesting sound that the band clearly had fun making — Dwyer even housed both the microphone and part of his guitar inside his mouth for a few beats during the tail end of the set.
“One of the things I really love about how they’ve kept it together over the years is [that] they haven’t changed with the times,” one audience member and long-time Osees fan, who goes by the name Tibbs, said. “It’s more like the times have warped to them because they’re still just doing the same sh*t they had been doing and it’s beautiful.”
The chaos in the room was palpable and transcendental. At one point, Dywers made an inhuman sound that could only be described as that of a dog’s squeaky toy; as if it was his alien species’ call to action, and his fans happily followed every command.
This authority was later exemplified by Dwyer, who left in the middle of the band’s last song — a nearly 10-minute long ballad — to grab a six-pack of Coronas and distribute them to his band before downing his own; possibly the only way to conclude the string of sonic anarchy.
Another audience member, Sophie Selk, said it was their first time attending an Osees show. In fact, they hadn’t heard of the band before Saturday night. But by the end of the set, they were among those crowd surfing.
“They’re so experimental. The double drums were huge; it meant two different rhythms, two different basses — you can feel it back and forth and it really makes that most pit great,” Selk said. “It was exactly how I imagined it: My first ever mosh pit.”