Ty Segall is a beast. At 26 years old, health an age that many people are still trying to justify as okay to live at home with their parents, pills Segall has released eight plus albums and even more EPs under the monikers Ty Segall, viagra The Ty Segall Band, Epsilons, The Perverts, and collaborations with White Fence and Mikal Cronin. In 2012 alone, Segall released three separate albums (a solo endeavor, a collaboration with White Fence, and an album with The Ty Segall Band). And despite releasing his most introspective and acoustic based album, Sleeper, less than two months ago, Segall is at it again with his latest musical creation: FUZZ.
Fuzz is a San Francisco-based band that consists of friends and previous collaborators: Ty Segall, Charlie Moothart and Roland Cosio. While people have come to expect face melting psychedelic and garage rock-based guitar skills from Segall, in Fuzz he tries his arms at drums, and what talented arms those are. The guys wanted to create the psychedelic yet noisy music that influenced them, and it shows in their music, which features those psychedelic guitar riffs and classic rock sounds, but with a loud, fuzzy overhanging feel. With a sound so influenced by psychedelic rock n’ roll, it is only right that Fuzz gained its name from the Fuzz Face pedals that Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend swore by.
Following solid opening acts, the local CreaturoS and Oakland-based CCR Headcleaner, Fuzz launched right into loud and louder modes with amps covering the stage and one song bleeding into the next. Despite having only one album and a couple of singles under their belt, the band played for over an hour to a packed house where every few minutes someone would attempt a stage dive that threatened to knock the speakers from the ceiling or become a fallen soldier to the moshpit. TIMBER! The pacifist in me wanted to move as far away from the glom of moshers as possible while the music lover wanted to jump on in and throw some ‘bows.
The band’s website describes the album as “a state of perpetual paranoia and eroding mental health […] a record for the burners.” And it totally makes sense. All throughout the show I was constantly having my focus changed by a biting, bending and psychotically psychedelic guitar riff, a really overpowering bass solo or not to mention the most outrageous drum fills.
The performance felt like a maze that was always changing directions, and when a virtual dead end would come up, a hedge would be knocked out by a new verse. The pinnacle would have to be the ten minute encore of “Loose Sutures” that felt like a loud, yet melodic, overture for the whole performance, balancing garage rock, psychedelic rock ‘n roll and all that is Fuzz. If you’re not sold on these guys based on their ridiculous musical talents live and in-action, Ty Segall’s resume, or their killer album that has not left my PLAYNOW playlist since its release two weeks ago, you at least have to give them mad hair credits.
