Ty Segall seems to form new bands roughly as often as most folks do their laundry, but the guy is good enough that the results are nearly always rewarding, and that's certainly the case with
GØGGS. Teaming up with Chris Shaw of
Ex-Cult and
Charles Moothart of
Fuzz and
CFM,
Segall has fashioned a 26-minute blast of furious, spazzed-out punk rock for
GØGGS' self-titled debut album. Built around hard, buzzy volleys of guitar abuse, relentless pummeling of drums, and feral howling,
GØGGS is a master's class in bad karma, with Shaw spitting out his rage about life along the margins in California with impressive ferocity.
Segall and
Moothart take turns on guitar and drums, and on these sessions they display a well-balanced skill set, as each keeps time with muscle and precision and the guitars cry out with punky angularity and metallic heaviness. While there are literally thousands of garage bands that could conjure up something like this,
Segall brings enough imagination and eccentric edge to set
GØGGS apart from the pack. The bursts of electronic dissonance suggest a sort of burnt-out psychedelia amidst the billowing rage, and his occasional vocal interjections and off-the-rails solos that suggest a jam session between
Greg Ginn and
Leigh Stephens give this an otherworldly feel that isn't much like anyone else. Given the intensity of the performances, it's just as well that
GØGGS runs less than half-an-hour, since it might be hard to handle many more tracks like "Final Notice" or "Glendale Junkyard." But this album is a wound-up marvel of imaginatively bent punk rock, and if
Segall, Shaw, and
Moothart have more like this in them, one can hope they'll pass it along. ~ Mark Deming