>> Thee Oh Sees are the latest incarnation of songwriter, singer, and guitarist John Dwyer's ever-evolving pop-folk psychedelic group. Dwyer, who hails from Providence, RI, has been active on the San Francisco indie scene since the late '90s, working with several bands, including the Coachwhips, Pink & Brown, Yikes, Up Its Alive, and Swords & Sandals, among others, and he formed OCS (which is an acronym for Orinoka Crash Suite, Orange County Sound, or whatever Dwyer decided it was on any given day) initially as a vehicle for the experimental instrumentals he was producing in his home studio. In time OCS morphed into an actual band, and worked under the usual flurry of names, most notably as the Oh Sees or the Ohsees, and eventually as Thee Oh Sees, featuring Dwyer on guitar and vocals, Brigid Dawson on vocals and tambourine, Petey Dammit (sometimes listed as Petey Dammit!) on bass, and Mike Shoun on drums. Sounding a bit like the Mamas & the Papas run through a seriously bent garage blender, the band signed with the German Tomlab label and released Sucks Blood in 2007 and The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In in 2008. Thee Oh Sees second full-length effort Help appeared in 2009 and featured a bit of a garage rock vibe mixed with the band's psych-pop sound. The album Warm Slime followed in 2010. Thee Oh Sees pulled double duty the following year, offering the pop-leaning Castlemania in June, followed in November by the heavier, wilder Carrion Crawler/The Dream, also the band's first recording with second drummer Lars Finberg (The Intelligence). 

Seattle-based noisenik Lars Finberg has played in some of that city's noisiest, weirdest bands, including the A Frames, Unnatural Helpers, and the Dipers, but as the Intelligence he throws downright poppy melodies in with jagged beats and shards of new wave and no wave guitars and keyboards. the Intelligence began in 1999, shortly after Finberg, Min Yee, and Erin Sullivan formed the A Frames (who were called Bend Sinister at the time). Finberg recorded the Intelligence's earliest work in his bedroom, playing his five-year-old son's drum kit and slathering everything in reverb and distortion to get a distinctive lo-fi sound.

Artwork by Joe Roberts and Jay Howell

Limited to 500 copies, black vinyl