Original artwork by Alan Forbes

Thee Oh Sees, The Fresh & Onlys, White Fence, Wounded Lion
Brick and Mortar Club
San Francisco, Calif.
December 31

There were lots of great Bay Area concerts to take in as this year ended including Primus’ Hawaiian themed show at the Great American Music Hall, The Greyboy Allstars featuring funk icon Fred Wesley at The Independent and Furthur at the Bill Graham Civic Center. But for less than 20 bucks, the (((folkYEAH!))) New Year’s option with red-hot headlining bands Thee Oh Sees and The Fresh & Onlys had to be one of the evening’s best options.

The night’s openers, Wounded Lion and White Fence, were so good that they could have each headlined their own New Year’s show. Wounded Lion played jagged rock anthems as one of the band’s two vocalists Raffi Kalenderian danced around entertainingly in a Cramps t-shirt. Meanwhile, White Fence gave the crowd ‘60s sounding psych rock numbers with silvery guitar leads followed by punkier stompers.

The Fresh & Onlys whipped up a cloud of electric guitar noise before launching into numbers including “Summer of Love” and “Waterfall.” The latter featured a little help from The Entrance Band’s Derek James and Extra Classic’s Adrianne Verhoeven. Throughout the set, lead Fresh & Only Tim Cohen kept referencing the killer psychedelic poster commemorating the event that was designed by Alan Forbes, which was on sale a few feet away.

Midnight came as Thee Oh Sees set up their gear, and bandleader John Dwyer sucked on a stogie. Their frantic two-drum assault and the quirky vocal interplay of Dwyer and keyboardist/vocalist Brigid Dawson set the crowd on fire quickly. Audience members climbed onto the stage and fell back into the audience like felled trees. Other excited concertgoers were tossed around the venue on the heads of the crowd with limbs splayed like scattered jacks.

By the time Thee Oh Sees were digging into “The Dream” from their recent Carrion Crawler/The Dream album, it was clear that this lucky New Year’s Eve crowd was witnessing a band at the peak of their powers.