John Wilkes Booze first surfaced in 1999 as a four-piece noisy garage soul outfit based in Bloomington, Indiana. The ensemble later grew to six members and positioned itself as an extension of the state's art-punk lineage alongside the Gizmos, Zero Boys, and MX-80 Sound. Emerging from the pop-psych indie rock collective the Impossible Shapes, the band initially operated under the fuller moniker the John Wilkes Booze Explosion, with Seth Mahern on vocals, Chris Barth handling bass, Jason Groth on guitar, Aaron Deer on organ, Mark Rice on drums, and Eric Weddle covering guitar, saxophone, and electronics. Following a short break at the start of 2001, the group resurfaced under its abbreviated name and with sharpened intent. In 2002 it unveiled Five Pillars of Soul, a run of EPs honoring overlooked figures the musicians sought to spotlight, among them Melvin Van Peebles, Patty Hearst, Marc Bolan, Albert Ayler, and Yoko Ono. The project drew substantial coverage and translated into roughly sixty live dates throughout 2003. During that stretch, Grant Pershing took over drums from Rice while John Dawson assumed guitar duties from Groth. Kill Rock Stars issued a single-disc distillation of the EP series in early 2004. The next year brought two further releases on the label: the vinyl-only Heliocentric Views of the John Wilkes Booze Pts. 1 & 2 in March, followed by the CD Telescopic Eyes Glance the Future Sick that August.
