After only a few months after the release of their album Help, Thee Oh Sees decide they want us to hear more reverberated garage rock/folk. Though the songs are well written, it feels like an unexpected visit that we really didn't need. By that I mean that the release of this album just feels a bit forced, almost as if John Dwyer just got really bored, decided not to read the fan mail demanding him to get Pink and Brown back together and just felt the need to make another album with Thee Oh Sees.
We begin Dog Poison with "The River Rushes (To Screw MD Over)" and it's an ongoing and sort of repetitive song that sounds pretty much like an abundance of their other songs. Afterwards, nothing really grabbed my attention until the song "Sugar Boat" began and even then it sounded like what they've done in the past, but compared to the first three songs, this seems more catchy and upbeat. Later on: "I Can't Pay You To Disappear"; again it sounds like something Thee Oh Sees, or even Ty Segall this time would've done. "Dead Energy" is where the idea that John Dwyer dropped his songwriting skills becomes even more apparent. Half of the song consists of the lyrics "oh oh oh oh oh oh oh" repeated over and over again. Dog Poison grabs the listener's ear for about the second or third and final time with the song "It's Nearly Over" (I don't think they're taking the album very seriously anymore) and it's very soft, mellow, and slightly gloomy in comparison to the rest of the album. It's very reminiscent of some of the songs that were on Sucks Blood. Oh wait, that was The Oh Sees. My bad.
Now I am a fan of Thee Oh Sees and their work but Dog Poison just emphasizes the question "Couldn't they have waited?" I didn't listen to this with a biased idea thinking this would already be bad due to the band's prolificacy, I just expected more. All the album really comes down to is just wasting time in the studio messing with reverb effects and laser noises with guitar pedals. John, I'm sure you have Brown's number somewhere.
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