Fungus II

One of the first rules of rock & roll is: you need a good drummer. The whole charmingly inept thing may work for a singer or guitarist, but if the drummer cant keep it together, the center will not hold and we all know how that plays out. So if one-man garage punk industry Ty Segall (not a bad drummer himself) was going to launch yet another project, joining forces with Brian Chippendale shows sound judgment on his part. Chippendale is the drummer and co-founder of Lightning Bolt, and whatever one might think about their assaultive style, his work has always been a remarkable example of precision in support of chaos, his tight yet frantic bursts of rhythm bounding all over the place but also giving the noise around him a unexpectedly stable framework. Chippendale is a good man to have around if you want to get noisy, and thats what Segall had in mind when he and Chippendale formed Wasted Shirt, who make their debut with 2020s Fungus II. Part of Segalls charm is his gift for finding something tuneful in even his most outre music, and thats certainly true on Fungus II, where a pop-friendly vocal hook floats over the top of Zeppelin 5, acoustic guitars add a freak-folk ambience to The Purple One, and damaged but swaggering rock fuels Double the Dream. While theres a playful element at work, much of Fungus II sounds ugly, and thats just the way they wanted it; the dominant elements here are harsh, bellowing vocals, ragged volleys of heavily distorted guitars, and freaked-out electronic manipulation. Chippendales drumming really does set this apart from Segalls more left-of-center efforts -- if noise rock has a Neil Peart, its him. Chippendales style is very busy, but theres a strong internal logic to his explosive bursts of percussive energy, and the closing For Strangers Entered the Cement at Dusk demonstrates that when he needs to lay down a groove, he can do so with clean efficiency. Wasted Shirt is a collaborative project in the best sense, as the strengths of both Segall and Chippendale are at the forefront on Fungus II, and if this album is less accessible than most of Segalls recent releases, it has excitement and daring to spare. ~ Mark Deming