Positive Destruction, the local music blog devoted to writing even more Oh Sees posts than I do, just put together a year-end best-of list:
The Bay Area absolutely smashed it in 2011, with some of our favorite artists releasing amazing albums, EPs and cassettes that we’ve been listening to endlessly this year. It was incredibly difficult to cull the past 12 months to our favorite 15 releases, but we did it anyway.
Thee Oh Sees’ “Carrion Crawler/The Dream” double-EP (pictured above) gets the #1 spot, which is fair, but I gotta say I think I like the Mikal Cronin record even better, so definitely buy it for the garage rocker on your shopping list. Read on for lots and lots of locally made gift ideas.
Mikal said in an interview that John Dwyer plays flute on one of the tracks. So there’s that
When is there going to be an sf garage/rock festival with ty, the oh sees, bare wires, lilac, wax idols,fresh and onlys, cronin, glitter wizard, and on and on. something for people that like to drink a lot of beer instead of wearing neon wayfarers.
all of those shows used to happen at the eagle.
RI fucking P. A lot of those guys still do play together, but the Eagle was hands down my favorite venue in SF. City just feels different without it.
also, the best (only?) metal album about SF was released this year:
http://www.metalblade.com/hammersofmisfortune/