There are certain bands that could only make complete sense within a few miles of the Pacific Ocean.
The Ooo-Maus are one of them.
Hailing from Santa Cruz and surrounding areas, the group occupies that wonderfully strange stretch of California coastline where surf culture, psychedelia, college kids, hippies, poets, and artists have co-existed long enough that nobody really remembers where one ends and the next begins.
That same collision seems to sit at the heart of The Ooo-Maus.
On paper, their influences might contradict, but in experiencing them live, it all makes perfect sense. The sun-drenched harmonies and pop instincts associated with the Beach Boys occupy one corner; the narcotic, organ-driven darkness of The Doors another. Throw in the primitive confrontation of Iggy Pop, old surf rock, garage psychedelia, and you’ve assembled something especially unique and unforgivably Californian.
The Ooo-Maus aren’t interested in presenting nostalgia behind a postcard or picture frame; they bring the sun and the surf straight to you.
Dylan Anderson fronts the group on vocals and guitar, Dylan Sheehan guides the piano and organ, Madi Montague brings it together on bass, and drummer Marc Brown moves and grooves casually behind the kit.
There is something immediately appropriate about a psych/surf outfit willing to work with each other not only as a tight-knit band, but as a musical tsunami—one that floods each ear and every listener with excitement and glee.
Surf music has always benefited from space.
Psychedelic music benefits from losing track of it entirely.
And somewhere between those two ideas, The Ooo-Maus blaze a trail second to none.
Although plenty of musicians can reproduce the sounds of the 1960s, far fewer understand what made those sounds strange in the first place.
The best psychedelic and garage bands were never psychedelic because somebody purchased the correct fuzz pedal. They were strange because they sounded slightly unrestrained—like the musicians themselves weren’t entirely certain where the song might take them next.
The Ooo-Maus seem comfortable living in that organic uncertainty.
And then there is Santa Cruz itself.
It would be difficult to imagine a more appropriate birthplace for them.
This is music that belongs somewhere between the Boardwalk and a poorly illuminated club several blocks inland. Music for a town where tourists spend the afternoon buying saltwater taffy while, somewhere nearby, a garage door is opening, an amplifier is warming up, and something considerably stranger is beginning to make noise.
The ingredients are there: surf-rock immediacy, psychedelic atmosphere, garage-rock attitude, melodic instincts, and pure passion.
The recipe is hardly a secret; it’s all laid out on the table.
They’re four amazing musicians giving California another irreplaceable voice.
Give me something with sand in its shoes. Give me more of The Ooo-Maus.
— Kevin Clausen