Ty Segall, "Fudge Sandwich" (In the Red)
Some people make playlists of their favorite songs, some folks' closets are full of mixtapes and some still make compilations on CD for themselves or their friends. But not the prolific Ty Segall, who takes a much more hands-on approach and has used his music collection as inspiration to record "Fudge Sandwich," gathering a handful of tracks from the late '60s to early '70s that have influenced him over the years.
It all starts with a menacing version of "Low Rider," War's hot-rod anthem, sounding straight out of a post-apocalyptic car movie, followed by an accurate though not reverential take on the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man." On John Lennon's "Isolation," one of his soul-baring "us vs. them" songs, Segall substitutes rancid-sounding guitars for the original's piano parts and makes full use of his vocal similarities with the Liverpudlian. That same Lennon-like vocal, added to even more distorted guitars, makes Funkadelic's "Hit It and Quit It" even more agonizing.
Segall's guitar tones get much praise and there's a whole catalog of them on hand, but it's his drumming that really stands out here, expertly shifting from rock to prog to punk and back again.
Rudimentary Peni's "Rotten to the Core" from 1983 is the "newest" song on the album, the London band's diatribe against Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer and a warning to fans that "rock stars deal in money not truth," while Segall turns The Dils' frantic "Class War" into passionate power-pop.
Segall says "Fudge Sandwich" was made just for fun and that's exactly what you'll have listening to it.