Single Review: Fuzz-"Sleigh Ride b/w You Won't See Me" 7"

How does Ty Segall do it? I know I am more than likely not even close to being the first person to ask this, but how it that Segall is able to create so much music, so constantly, and nearly all of it is top quality rock music of the highest order? I guess it’s fitting that his newest project Fuzz feels more like a true band effort then most of what he’s done in recent time. It feels at time removed from Segall’s usual garage rock blitz, which here is a very good thing.

Their second single in four months, here Fuzz has already begun to start figuring out how to expand and define what their sound is truly is. Not that the pure “Black Sabbath love channeled through a basement band” of their last single was a bad thing in anyway. Here though, the band has realized how to take that style and shape it into their own. A-side “Sleigh Ride” is a great testament to this; the song is still a cross between early metal, sludge, and garage rock, all second long guitar noodling and Segall's John Dwyer like vocals. However, the song's constant tempo shifts give the song an off-balance feel and the sense that it could fall apart & spin-off at any second. "You Won't See Me" has a much more steady and heavy feel to it, from the still drum work that opens the track before Charlie Moonhart's guitar bursts the proverbial dam. And yet the track is not as nearly flat as it appears, starting and stopping on a dime to convey a certain sense of tension before bursting again with the song's final, masterfully crafted old school solo.

In an alternate dimension, Fuzz might have been the root Segalls music might have taken. Both his past scrappiness is present, with the simple lyrics there almost just to fill the space between the noise, and his modern form, with Fuzz's understated complexity ever present in the twist and turns these songs take. Fuzz may be the result of Segall and co. having gotten to such a much more mature place with their music that they must sound a recourse in the form of channeling their old idols. If that is the case then so be it because the result is more great rock music from a man who has been making just that for the past six years.



Links:

Buy the "Sleigh Ride b/w You Won't See Me" 7" here, from In the Red Records