by David Wilikofsky
The saxophone may be the most underutilized instrument in rock and roll. I dare you to listen to “Born To Run” or “Wave of History” and tell me the saxophone doesn’t rock (and if you still want to argue, see X-Ray Specs or Morphine and admit defeat). With their latest album, Sex Tide try their hand at sax greatness. Their last album, 2017’s Possession Sessions, featured only the core duo of Aurelie Celine and Chris Corbin. It was a primal scream of an album that invoked dark rock classics by artists like The Cramps and Dead Moon. For Ohio they’ve grown to a quartet, adding saxophonist Ryan Mcauley and bassist Phillip Park to their lineup. It’s a move that’s paid off; Ohio expands the group’s palate while still managing to retain their scrappy charm.
Opener “Everything That Happens” makes this change immediately apparent. The song features the same unhinged vocals from Celine and raw riffs from Corbin as previous iterations of the band, but the newest members add more meat to the song’s bones. Mcauley’s saxophone flits over the track, filling any crack or crevice it can find, while Park’s bass provides an anchor within the chaos around it. It’s still unmistakably a Sex Tide track, but these additions allow them to push their sound to greater heights. The quartet covers a lot of stylistic territory over the album’s subsequent seven tracks. “Prick of Liquid” and closer “Scorpion” are both filled with sludgy, heavy riffs. “Clown Core” is a full blown noise freakout. Heck, “Golden Fawn” could even be a long lost Meat Puppets track. It still all sounds like quintessential Sex Tide, with Mcauley and Park providing a foundation for Celine and Corbin to play off of.
There are plenty of great songs on Ohio, yet few really stand out. This is meant as a complement; the album has a natural ebb and flow whose the collective energy and power far outshines that of any particular track. The A-side moves from the buoyant bounce of “Everything That Happens” to the blown out insanity of “Clown Core”, each track progressively becoming heavier and more unhinged. After the A-side’s climax, the B-side almost feels like a reprieve; everything from the classic rock sounds of “Golden Fawn” and the sludgy riffs of “Plaster Mix Went” goes down easy. This particular brand of rough around the edges rock seems simple: play a few riffs, yell a few lines, you’ve got a song. But Ohio is deceivingly complex. Plenty of people strap on a guitar and set out to rock; few do it with this much style and finesse.