OCEANSIZE get on stage, wave, and tease a wave of space noise into existence – very nice while it lasts – before launching (huh) into heavy post-rock / metal monsters - messy crunching guitars and soft ethereal melodies, wiggy song structures and crazy screeching hardcore Wall Of Sound. Not really Micky Mouse in terms of scope, more Pink Floyd...hence the name I guess...and it sounds ace on paper...but somehow Oceansize just don’t deliver.
For instance: ‘Massive Bereavement’ (about the only song title I caught)...wonderful, chiming, swimmy guitars and mumbled vocals – reminiscent of Beck I thought, although God knows why – which breaks down into a squalling mess freak out, then switches gears again into screaming, angular rock and pounding drums, spinning out, creating a massive din. Yeah! It's prog rock! It’s about 10 minutes long! And this is the problem. It’s going to take something extremely special to hold an audience for that long but I got the impression that Oceansize figured that if you chuck enough stuff out there, something’s gonna stick.
Not that they were bad, as such...they could play and they’ve latched onto something a bit different...a lot of it was uplifting – rising chord sequences, very powerful, meaty sounds booming out of the speakers – a little Envy-ish at times - which would suddenly swoop down and let a pretty, reverberating guitar line bubble up from nowhere and then BANG! The drums stomp it out. Lung splitting vocals. I could imagine a Pumpkins-era Billy Corgan wailing over some of Oceansize’s songs. At times the depth of noise was very impressive.
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But even so, Oceansize bored me. For all of their various influences and ideas, there was no real distinctions...I could swear they cut up their songs and pasted various bits into other songs and after a while it just got tedious.
The last song, however, sent me away a little less downcast. It was seriously beautiful. Plunging sonic waves and tribal drums before the song is stripped to the bare bones – a haunting whale-song sound and the big guy on lead guitar opens his mouth and –Christ! –he has the voice of an angel! He wails the same few notes over and over again for what seems like ages. It was stunning – like something an Apollo Moon Mission-era Brian Eno would send spiralling out of his studio, or maybe a slightly more frantic Slowdive.
However, it took me 45 minutes to hear this song. The rest of the set creates little or no emotion for me. I dunno. They’re definitely doing something...I just don’t know what it is. In the bar afterwards, I overheard a guy say something like “If you liked that, then you should hear them on record – amazing.” And I’ve talked to someone else and gotten “Biggest pile of shite out of Manchester for decades”as a response. You be the judge.
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