Thee Oh Sees

San Francisco’s Thee Oh Sees are heading back down under for Sugar Mountain Festival and a smashing run of side shows through Australia, their spiritual home, this January. What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees?Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, melody-maiming John Dwyer careening across your cranium, rounded out by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what you thought it meant to make 21st century rock ’n’ roll?Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point: how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been to pin down.Since Dwyer launched it in the late ‘90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. While Dwyer still records songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a five-piece featuring keyboardist/singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun, and multi- instrumentalist/singer Lars Finberg of The Intelligence.