Fuzz

Album Review

The word "prolific" comes up in almost every discussion of San Francisco songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and garage-psych wonder Ty Segall. With a discography that grew almost exponentially ever since he came onto the scene in the late 2000s, productivity with uncommonly strong results became one of his calling cards. With Fuzz, Segall joins longtime friends and collaborators Charles Moothart and Roland Cosio to create a band deserving of its own entity status, channeling the (aptly) fuzzy guitar tones, tin-can drums, and saturated psychedelia of early-'70s proto-metal gods like Blue Cheer, the Groundhogs, and Jimi Hendrix. Segall, usually known for his guitar-wielding antics, actually makes an incredible showing as the drummer for Fuzz, still joining guitarist/vocalist Moothart with his distinctly sneery vocals. Were it not for the meeting of the pair's decidedly punkish unhinged voices, Fuzz would give no clues that punk, indie rock, or any non-heavy music after 1976 ever happened. With the exception of the fast-paced "Hazemaze," the songs here largely fall into an overblown swagger, with scuzzy distorted guitar tones, wailing witchy harmonies, and an elastic heaviness that owes most of its charm to the blueprints of Black Sabbath's classic first six albums. The quick-shifting tempo changes and fluttering blues-scale solos of "Loose Sutures" take their cues directly from Tony Iommi's playing, and the meandering jam that falls in the song's middle even finds bassist Cosio loosely quoting Geezer Butler's basslines from Sabbath's earliest, evilest jams. "Raise," with its demonic backing vocals and druggy, spiraling lead guitars, calls to mind hints of the early San Francisco psychedelic scene in the '60s, leaning only slightly away from the primordial metal and biker rock flavor of the rest of the album. Fuzz, on the whole, is a heavy, greasy, stoned affair, with enough of a foot in the past to cast a sepia-toned haze over all the songs, but still a boldly creative and original set of room-demolishing tunes. The main success of a band connected to Segall's enormous musical personality is to not be overwhelmed or outshined by it, and in its best moments, Fuzz will have listeners forgetting Segall is part of the equation at all, the album's brooding heaviness more immediately moving than any of his distinctive sonic ticks.