REVIEW: Chime Oblivion—Chime Oblivion (2025)
Osees' John Dwyer pulls in Bow Wow Wow's drummer and a host of Castle Face pals to make a righteous punk-pop record.
You can always rely on John Dwyer to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Admittedly sometimes the rabbit is a zombie bunny wishing to feast on your brains and destroy your house, but a rabbit nonetheless. This one, Chime Oblivion, comes in a pleasingly fluffy format, filled with instant, fizzy little pop nuggets that once again that he can basically do what he likes, to a standard that shows almost everyone else up.
Not for no reason, David Barbarossa of og Adam And The Ants and Bow Wow Wow fame is listed first in the credits. It’s as if John had a bunch of songs that he just knew that David would be able to intuit, and so put together a band around that rhythmic pulse, roping in H.L. Nelly (Naked Lights) for—often Ananbelle from Bow Wow Wow-style—vocal duties and co-writing, and a cast of cohorts including the charmingly named Weasel Walters of the equally charmingly named Flying Luttenbachers. No, me neither. Interestingly, it’s him on guitar, not JPD, who decides to take bass and synth duties for this one. Both excel, so it’s a smart choice.
The results are far beyond any reasonable expectations, and you know it’s going to rip the second opening track (and lead single) Neighbourhood Dog bursts out of the traps.
In the same approximate headspace and delivery as the best Sleater Kinney (and, err, Bow Wow Wow) tracks of old, the songs get right in your face, appropriately barking and yapping the vocals, pure energy and spirit, once again proving that great songs have very little to do with originality, but spirit, drive, chemistry and charisma. This has all of these ingredients in spades, and is as fresh as.
With 12 songs delivered in a quickfire 28 minutes (take no notice of the seconds long Incidental Synth tracks), there’s barely a pause for breath, as the band rip through songs mostly around the 2 minute mark. It’s a fat-free kind of experience, and with that length of album, they’d make the perfect support slot, able to run through the whole thing without overrunning their allotted 30 minutes.
But being yet another John Dwyer side quest, it hasn’t perhaps picked up the attention it genuinely deserves. Having delivered such an inordinate number of obtuse, borderline unlistenable experimental freakouts over recent years, I think even the Osees loyalists have stopped automatically checking these things out. I don’t blame them, quite honestly—some of them have been, politely, inessential, but Chime Oblivion is as fresh an engaging as anything John has been involved with since the glory days of the likes of Mutilator Defeated At Last and its ilk—a creative space he did his very best work, for my money. What this album demonstrates comprehensively is that when he feels like going back to this kind of taut, psych rock stuff, he’s still the absolute master at it.
