Osees – Off Course

Osees' Off Course finds John Dwyer’s Californian garage-psych group circling back to an older way of working in 2026: extended collective jams, tapes taken home and shaped into songs, then a return to the studio to record the material live to tape. That process matters here. Rather than sounding overworked, the album leans into a loose, live-in-the-room feel, with organ-led grooves, free-improv sprawl and punchier garage-rock bursts all pulling in the same direction.

The strongest thread running through Off Course is how raw experimentation is kept song-focused. The band reportedly built the record from long and short jam pieces, then finished it with vocals at Stu-Stu-Studio and final contributions from Tom Dolas and Brigid Dawson. The result is a dense but handmade record, full of warped hooks, shifting rhythms and the kind of tape-driven momentum that suits Osees especially well when they let repetition and texture do the heavy lifting.

There is also a clear emotional frame beneath the noise. Dwyer’s own description casts the album as a question about where we are now and how we got here, sending out a signal “into the darkness” while insisting on shared presence and survival. Tracks including “The Trick” and “The Brute On His Knees” suggest both immediacy and payoff, with the closing stretch described as especially melodic. For longtime listeners, it sounds like a purposeful reset; for newcomers, it is a strong entry point into the band’s more exploratory side.

Reviews

• The latest album from John Dwyer and his fellow garage-psych explorers embraces a fluid, improvisatory approach rooted in sprawling jam sessions and infinitely unspooling grooves. - Pitchfork