Serious incisions are made by Austin band Oh No! Oh My! every time you blink or even before you’ve had the chance to, though they’re performed with such steadily ice cold hands, with a baby’s touch, light and hardly noticeable, that you just think a door was opened somewhere, letting in a poof of urgent, sprinting new air. They make these exploratory cuts without your even knowing it, finding the target on the side or right there in front, on the belly or up a little near the heart chamber and just scoping it out for a few imperceptible moments. They get DNA samples or whatever they’re looking for, but more often than not, what they get isn’t what they thought they were going to find and as a truly bizarre twist to the story, they didn’t know they were looking for anything in the first place. If there was a real scalpel, not just one made of air and accusation, when it was pointed out, they’d look down, horrified to see the blade and the splattered wash of red blood across their knuckles. Where’d that come from? What was I doing, they’d plead. But what Greg Barkley, Daniel Hoxmeier, Joel Calvin and Tim Regan do has no purport of such gruesome or deviant giving. It’s more of the average, everyday acquisition and retention of the surveillance that goes on constantly when we’re not sleeping. During those waking hours, Oh No! Oh My! are those oil paintings on the walls with eyes that following you like phantom voyeurs, peeping and never letting you out of their sight, burning holes into your back. Again, they make their observations in a way that’s never unnerving, just a way that serves them with all kinds of valuable dressing for their musical essays of the people in their neighborhood, their circle of friends, the people that they know little about and then build them out into full-bodied and interestingly enough, full-minded characters that may, but likely do not bear much of a resemblance to the person who provided the original dough for the modeling. It might be the greatest compliment that can be paid to any writer, commending them on developing a person down to the minute and most unseen layers, down into the small details, sitting in what appear to be the cheap seats, but which are in actuality the thrones. The details that have to be combed for, the ambitions that are left doing slow backstrokes and the feelings that will never be admitted with too strong of voice are the ones that this band of quirky pop, bulleted by unorthodox melodies and presentation delves into frequently. These are not the acts of straight forward fiction writers or obvious observationalists, casing people and recording what’s seen. A fiction writer can just whip up any old thing and claim it as a dependent. They can make up characters when the need arises. Barkley doesn’t seem to do that. The versions of those peopling Oh No! Oh My! songs are hybrids of what you do see and what only the omnipotent could infer. They are x-rays that expose the intangibles in all of their various forms. There’s the girl who’s plopping down into some leather seats and creating fun wherever it may be in kicking up some heels. There’s the other girl in “Be A Star” who loves high school musical theater and always takes on the male roles. She had her first kiss as Romeo. She is loved by all of the boys when she plays males, but they feel weird about it, and she’s loved by all of the girls when she does the same because she’s the perfect boy in their eyes. The characters are set up for the circus – but a circus for the masses, for those we wouldn’t normally put a tent over. It’s putting a bowtie and a bowler hat on a bear then getting small amounts of amusement from the sight. The largest amounts of what you end up feeling are of compassion for the bear when you understand the difficulties it faces on a day-to-day basis. The people that Barkley writes about can’t help but be real people. They’re you, most certainly, and I, the same, and they are those inner monologues – when we KNOW no one else could be listening – that have come to life and told us all something new. These conversations are startling in that they’re so vibrant and they’re also telegraphed somehow because there’s never any surefire way to hide everything. There are tells and there are magnifying glasses, not to mention scalpels, oh my.

First song
Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (Oh No! Oh My!) [3.60MB] [3953 downloads]


— unreleased
This is the most recent song that we’ve been playing around with, and I think it’s quite different from anything we’ve ever done before. It originally had a temporary title of “Space Mountain,” but we now mostly refer to it by the title above. Tom (our manager) was telling us how he had been flying to meet us recently, and his luggage got mixed up with someone else’s, and he wound up taking home this suitcase filled with random toys and DVD’s. One of those DVD’s happened to be some sort of weird porno movie called….“Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman.” We thought it was hilarious that some guy was flying around the country with this movie in his suitcase, so we started referring to the song as such. I think the “Space” part of it only really describes the weird guitar fades that Tim does during the instrumental bridge.

Second song
Be A Star (Oh No! Oh My!) [2.79MB] [3742 downloads]


— unreleased
This is another as-of-yet unreleased song, however about a year older than “Wham Bam.” This song is best to listen to while performing weird interpretive dancing during the “You said you’d never go…” part. The “Robot” would also be appropriate. You haven’t truly experienced this
song until you see Tim bust a move during that part.

Third song
Go To Work (Oh No! Oh My!) [3.47MB] [3544 downloads]


— unreleased
I’ve always looked at “Be A Star” and “Go To Work” as sister songs. We started writing and playing them around the same time, and I think they counterpoint each other in a weird Odd Couple type of way. The arrangement has been somewhat cut down from it’s original inception, and Joel not only plays drums during this song, but also hits drum triggers that play single note keyboard samples. So…he’s playing drums, and playing the keyboard part note-by-note. He does this in numerous other songs we play live, and how he does that in the midst of playing full drum beats amazes me. I can barely stand up and play guitar, so kudos to you, sir! And kudos again.

Fourth song
A Pirate's Anthem (Oh No! Oh My!) [3.61MB] [3347 downloads]


– original version appears on Between The Devil And The Sea
We had already been running late by the time we arrived at Daytrotter, so by this time in our session, we were trying to hurry up and crank out one more song. Our friends The Deadly Syndrome had recorded their session right before us and were sticking around until we were finished. I think we chose this song as a result of one of them saying this was one of their favorite songs we play live, so we went for it. We tried to convince them to come sing the choral yelling part towards the end with us, but to no avail. Chris did join us for one take, but it just ended up making us laugh. For some reason this is the song we had the hardest time with despite it being the oldest we played. It took us a couple of times to get through it, I have no idea why.

Feb 12 — Lades – /Copenhagen, Denmark/
Feb 13 — Hafenklang Exil -/ Hamburg, Germany/
Feb 14 — Bang Bang Club – /Berlin, Germany/
Feb 15 — Klub Strahov 007 -/ Prague, Czech Republic/
Feb 16 — Amp – /Munster, Germany/
Feb 17 — Patronaat – /Haarlem, Netherlands/
Feb 18 — L’Escalier – /Liège, Belgium/
Feb 19 — Point Éphémère -/ Paris, France/
Feb 21 — Ecole Polytechnique -/ Nantes, France/
Feb 22 — L’Inca – /Bordeaux, France/
Feb 23 — La chatte à la voisine -/ Toulouse, France/
Feb 24 — Festival Generiq -/ Belfort, France/
Feb 25 — Festival Generiq -/ Dijon, France/
Feb 26 — Le Molodoï -/ Strasbourg, France/
Feb 28 — Grillen -/ Colmar, France

Oh No Oh My Official Site
Oh No Oh My MySpace Page