As a guest DJ on Henry Rollins' KCRW show, John Dwyer recently offered a glimpse into where his record collector inclinations have taken him lately: into the world of early electronic experimentation. He shared a playlist of material featuring musicians fascinated by the capabilities of synthesizers—Paul McCartney's "Temporary Secretary", Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach, Chrome, Eno, Kraftwerk (from Ralf & Florian), early Depeche Mode, Les Rallizes Dénudés, and a handful of compilation-based oddities. Some of the artists in his playlist couldn't easily perform those songs live due to technical complications. For them, fiddling with a Moog meant, in many cases, experimenting in solitude. McCartney, for example, has discussed his initial fascination with synthesizers, when he walked away from Wings' recent breakup and made the one-man album II. "I just wanted to see what it was all about, and have a go, and see what I could do with it," he said.
McCartney's story feels like an applicable parallel to Dwyer's new album, released under the name Damaged Bug. (Thee Oh Sees aren't breaking up, though—they're taking a break and have a new album coming this spring.) Dwyer recently decided, after years of making primarily guitar-centric music, to track down a synthesizer he remembered from his childhood, one that was sold by RadioShack in the early 1980s: the Realistic MG-1. "A buddy of mine had it as a kid and I always coveted it," he told Rollins. Through the span of an entire month just before he moved from San Francisco to L.A., he had a go with his new machine. He wrote and recorded Hubba Bubba, an album where he largely set his guitar aside in favor of his newly acquired early 1980s Moog, in solitude.
As the album's central piece of equipment likely suggests, no, these aren't the slick, sophisticated, polished synth sounds from the last Classixx record. They're songs largely defined by blaring, primitive sonics—fried electronic bleats that suit the name "Damaged Bug." And if you go in expecting to hear the microphone swallowing, tongue dangling maniac who made the kinetic burners from Floating Coffin and Carrion Crawler/The Dream, adjust your expectations; Hubba Bubba's songs take their time. Occasionally, they trudge. The only respite from the prolonged, droning synths on "Photograph" are Dwyer's breathy vocals. "Hubba Bubba", a soberly sung love song about a shared piece of bubblegum, moves even more slowly. Then there's the three-minute instrumental "Catastrophopbia", a cool down between tracks—just persistent thumps, a burnt digital echo, and the occasional noodling on the MG-1. In terms of tempo and arrangements, the album is sparse enough as it is, and therefore, does not require a cool down.
But ultimately, it's a mistake to call foul on all of Hubba Bubba's slow or quiet moments*—*an easy thing to do if you're using Oh Sees songs like "The Dream" as a rubric. The loose narrative calls for darkness. Consider lyrics like "I want to live like a human," which in the context of dated synthesizers can sound like a Random Access Memories-style plea to "give life back to music," but in the context of Dwyer's detached vocals, it could just as easily be read as yearning for normalcy. "What kind of fool am I," he asks on "Eggs at Night" before talking about "seeing endless empty night." The album's full of these big, dramatic questions and statements, like "Am I a waste of life?" or "Anyone can see it's all been a lie".
Thankfully, it's not just dour missives and desolation—there's life in these songs. Dwyer's unmistakable guitar sound makes an appearance on "Gloves for Garbage", adding some welcome traction to the song's persistent synth warble. On tracks like "Eggs at Night" and "Wasteland", he uses his synth to craft hooks with momentum, then he supplements them with handclaps, sleigh bells, and of course, actual drums. Probably the best moment on the album comes during its centerpiece, "Sic Bay Surprise", which has the same sort of sweet, quiet harmonies that were typical of Oh Sees songs like "No Spell". Then, at the end of one of the verses, you can hear his unmistakeable falsetto yelp: "OW!" One syllable, slightly muted in the mix, on an album packed with deep-voiced stoicism; one small indication that he's having fun.
