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Just when you thought Detroit’s rock underbelly was done cooking up inspirational and original jams (we’re talking the likes of Wildcatting, Prussia, and Dutch Pink), the Oscillating Fan Club’s Feverish Dreams As Told By… comes along and drops a massive and awesome surf-influenced psyche-rock bomb directly on our heads. Formed in 2004 by high school chums Ray Thompson and Pierce Reynolds, the OFC came together over a joint love for 1960s Brit-pop and the more experimental sounds of string wranglers like Sonic Youth and Television. After kicking around for a few years — releasing one EP entitled Beatles Catting Wildly for local-indie force Loco Gnosis in August of 2007 — the OFC have honed their influences, and the result is this 16-song strong monster of an album. Rowdy tracks like “My Grave Face” may nod to the Pixies, and “Suburban Lovers of the Dead” would appeal to anybody looking for a perfect modern combo of Tapes ‘n Tapes’ quirk and the Shins at their most amped up, but mostly, these dudes are digging on some different shit all together. While other groups waste their time searching for the perfect pop moment, or perhaps beating a dead horse, the OFC are busy digesting and regurgitating reverb-drenched surfedelia (”Party Hat”), Eastern European-style guitar skronk (”7 Nights in Khartoum”), and space-aged bachelor pad inspired instrumentals (”Acoustic Jellyfish”) — all flanked by moments of psyche-rock brilliance that wouldn’t be out of place on Olivia Tremor Control’s classic Black Foliage album. It’s the kind of stuff that would make Thurston Moore, Frank Black, and local psyche-pop hero Matthew Smith (of Outrageous Cherry) freak out with enthusiastic glee. Plus, these guys put on a live show that is as unpredictable and unhinged as the directions they choose to take on Feverish Dreams; a winning combination, if you ask us. Score another one for Detroit’s new school of weird. —Ryan Allen (Detour Magazine) 5/5 Stars Here's what we have: exuberant shock grooves, with hard, buzzing spaz-marches and sideways poeticisms over a psychedelic sand-splotched tuxedo-wearing charm, or, put simply, superbly done guitar-pop. The Oscillating Fan Club have grown into a beautiful beast, with their own war stories of weeknight club shows, smoke-soaked amps and broken pedals. They’ve been agilely contorting themselves from the bedraggled and spastic indie-scuffed calypso creep-pop of their genesis into a sleek and stately aristocrat of subtle psychedelic surf tones. From the wavy grooves of glammy guitar riffs and the irresistible hooks of visceral early-day garage rock, to the noodly experimental guitar errantry of art-punk elegance, to the wry and spacey melancholy poetics of Reed or Pollard, we get bam-bam-jungle boogie invigoration that slides swiftly into lethally precise percussion. It’s the fuzzy euphoria of a smooth cruise down a sun-soaked freeway in a convertible that slips into informal freakouts with “party hats” in fatalistic embrace of the atomic age. With overwhelming layers of spindly-fingered guitar work and percussion from post-rock jazz, there's high-roar vocals that both swoon and shout. — JEFF MILO (Real Detroit Weekly) |