Thee Oh Sees

From day one, garage/psych provocateur John Dwyer—of noiseniks Pink and Brown and Coachwhips—has long embodied the stylistic collisions and contradictions of 21st-century underground rock. He formed Thee Oh Sees as a solo studio endeavour in 1997 in San Francisco, but by 2005 the project became his primary working band, ceding much of the studio indulgence in favour of a tune-driven attack, by turns catchy and brutal. In the years since, the group transformed endlessly with a revolving cast of fellow travellers, serving as a kind of catch-all for Dwyer’s broad, transgressive interests, where psychedelia, garage rock, Krautrock, punk and noise constantly rotate in new admixtures. Fittingly, he has regularly tweaked the band’s name: Orinoka Crash Suite, OCS, Orange County Sound, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees, Thee Oh Sees and Oh Sees. After churning out recordings with a relatively stable Bay Area lineup, Dwyer announced a hiatus in 2013. Soon after he moved to Los Angeles, where the group reemerged the following year, carrying on with relentless touring and recording. The band follow their shape-shifting leader, with recordings functioning as mementos of particular moments in time. Yet over two decades, that approach has become the identity of Thee Oh Sees, an extroverted stroll through high-energy, high-volume rockers with Dwyer’s wiggy sensibility as its pounding heart.