Perpetual Doom is proud to present the long-awaited full-length from Tommy and The Ohs: Mariposa Gold. Ohs’ mastermind Thomas Oliverio has worked alongside some of the biggest names in music today—but with Mariposa Gold, he takes a sharp turn into the psychedelic reaches of American roots music and the avant-garde. The result is a wild trip through a lavish soundscape, a California of fantasy and heartbreak, where genres and traditions bleed together in “the big surreal.”
Guided by Oliverio’s fine-tuned sense of production and melody, Mariposa Gold is lush with arrangements that strive toward new and surprising dimensions. These songs sway like hummable country weepers sent through the looking glass, joining sheer virtuosity, worthy of the best session players, to a distinct experimental sensibility shaped by bluegrass, country, and psychedelia.
Album opener “Bombshell” propels forward to surf guitar and a shivering tambourine. The song has the urgency of a quest, adding layers of organ and a driving backbeat, building as Oliverio’s sings of a “flame in the brain.” Is it a breakdown? The beginning of a love affair? On this side of the golden coast, there might not be any difference. It is a fitting opening statement for an album packed dense with explosive material.
