Fuzz – Fuzz
After only minutes away from the public eye, garage whirlwind Ty Segall is back and – guess what – this time he’s got a new band. California three-piece Fuzz are schoolyard friends, reprising the forgotten Epsilons line-up of the early 00s. As Fuzz, the main man himself is on drums and vocals, the latter of which he shares with Ty Segall Band guitarist Charlie Moothart – equally of superlative garage-surf outfit The Moonhearts , so too Roland Cosio here picked for bass duty.
And the trio attack the eight, riff-heavy tunes that comprise this self-titled LP (which doesn’t include the blistering first single “This Time I Got A Reason”) with typically sloppy, sludgy abandon. They’ve even got producer Chris Woodhouse on board – he who does Thee Oh Sees usually. If you’re now thinking “obvious win”, you’d be correct though the dark opener does lull you into that clichéd false sense of security as it stares down the crossroads between rhythmic meditation and psyche-noise before then exploding into serrated, drawn-out proto-metal – a pattern that “Loose Sutures” later runs with, getting solo crazy and generally crushing it with fuzz pedal abuse.
You don’t, of course, need hours of studio sheen and overdub trickery when you’ve got a groove nicked straight from Satan, such as that which growls out of “What’s In My Head”. Cleaning up for a similar sound, “Sleigh Ride” too is great fun, gunning for Sabbath chug by way of power-blues bludgeoning. Arguably, it’s far from complex to smash out ramshackle shred and gnarly jam-rock, the sort of thing presumably littered Hendrix’s brain, but just as it worked then so too does it work now, despite Segall continuing to make it all look so effortless.
Advised downloads: “Loose Sutres” and “What’s In My Head”.
~Fuzz is out now on In The Red .~