#3765 Ovlov - Greatest Hits, Vol 2

4/5 great, simple songs elevated by great production - those crisp drums, that luxurious guitar fuzz. pure crunch for days

#3645 Dommengang - No Keys

3/5 those riffs so heavy, muscular structures striding through the bullshit of 2019 - but that effortless, hooky irresistiblity of Love Jail was lost somewhere along the way

#3595 Gong Gong Gong - President Piano Co. Tape

3.5/5 a study in vibration! Patient, skeletal garage-surf riffs, fizzling with reverb and harmonics. Guitar and bass and the space makes three.

#3509 Ty Segall - Deforming Lobes

4/5 a couple bars of riffing in, Ty stops the song, clarifies how a drum fill goes, apologizes, and the band kicks back in on the one. 15 seconds later, the fill comes. Budda-budda-budda-buppppa. Duly teased, it hits like fucking lightning.

And its the critical moment of the whole record, this moment of vulnerability, recovery, and  _payoff. A testament to how tight the band it, and how loose the sound feels -- its a thrill.

Segall's not a born frontman. His songs aren't _about much other than an excuse to stomp and shred. But that band's in top form here, so loud, so dedicated, 35 minutes is right. This isn't a concert experience, because that's not the sound. It's moment to moment to moment and that 8 songs is all it takes to give you the idea so

#3482 The Men - Hated: 2008-2011

4/5 The Men are one of the best rock bands of the decade, and here they stretch their claim back. A rhythm section capable of motorik perfection paired with a werewolf nightmare willingness to go for the throat -- we get more of the latter here, with flashes of the Jekyll poet that gave us Oscillation. Raw power driven past intellect, thrilling history

#3389 Jacques Dutronc - Il Est Cinq Heures (s/t '68)

3.5/5
French garage rock with bite, and some damned pretty Kinksian interludes too. Fiery and inventive, though the language makes it a lot harder for the unfrench to lock into. French just isn't a natural-sounding language for this kind of punchy rock, keeping the universal feel from finding its way through

#3310 Mike Krol - I Hate Jazz

4.5/5
Not since Jay Reatard have I heard songs this fucking _tight, just catchy brash pop-punk forge-welded into impossible sharpness, streaked with the noise and melody of its enemies.

#2944 The King Khan and BBQ Show - The King Khan and BBQ Show

KK+BBQ got rock and roll from the beginning. Doo-wop's simplest longings loaded into garagey rockets and delivered to your Exploding Heart. A simple sentiment shredded and blasted into your chest by someone who knows how to sharpen a hook and aim 4/5

#2927 Ty Segall - Singles 2

Plenty of old school Ty Segall scuzz and fuzz. Nothing quite as instantly catchy as his best stuff, but a rocksolid listen for 3rd wave garage fans 4/5

#2926 Ty Segall - Ty Segall (2017)

Ty Segall distills his history. Never as raw as Lemons, never as ferocious as Slaughterhouse, but carrying some streamlined version of their spirit - this's a mellowing of his recent, desperate lunges away from his roots.

Here the hooks are effortless, the fuzz is natural. Where old Ty was a hundred-reverberation melee, new Ty is a flashing two-guitar cross-channel duel. And for once the pretty songs -- prettier than usual even -- feel at home. With the hindsight of the Freedom's Goblin's triumph, it's hard not to see this as a sweet last kiss to Segall's garage era sound 4/5

#2923 Ty Segall - Freedom's Goblin

Freedom's Goblin's a sprawling, brilliant double album that takes Segall's dalliances with glam and squealing strangeness, marries them to his natural talents for hooksome fuzz, adds some killer rock horns, and blossoms into a bewildering opus.

After reaching the outer limits of what blasted guitar rock could accomplish, Ty Segall seemed lost. But last year's self-titled album was a centering ritual and the path opened up. Sweet 60's shimmer, Exile swagger, flashes of outright power pop (5 Ft Tall!) and more - none of the 19 songs sound the same. It harkens back to those adventurous albums from 90's bands trying to find space outside their sound: Tiny Music, Vitalogy, In It For the Money, Mellon Collie. Segall takes solo credit on this one, but there's a band on the cover and a band's worth of ideas on the record.

And then there's those sweet little callbacks. A hollowed-out third version of Talkin (may he keep making these forever) shows Segall hasn't lost his Diddy Wah Diddy. A 12 minute track closes things out, a pair of Cowgirl in the Sand guitars stretching Sleeper's title track into glitched out disintegration.

Ty's early stuff is legend, and he's finally showing us how much more he's capable of 4.5/5

#2751 The Gories - I Know You Fine, But How You Doin'

Jack White called them the best garage rock band since the 60's and I absolutely believe that he believes that: it's hard to imagine they weren't an influence on the early White Stripes sound.

He might even be right, too; the Gories cut right to the sound's ugly, faltering heart. The playing's so loose, the instruments so fucking fuzzed out, all the vocals yelped and sneered out of tune and off-time. A glorious collision of blues, rockabily and punk, every song effortlessly dirty and utterly sincere 4/5

#2745 Ron Gallo - Heavy Meta

Heavy Meta kicks off with all the fuzz and yelp of a garage rock re-re-revival, but Gallo's not satisfied with being the next Ty Segall. The second side's long-ringing guitar meanderings reveal dreams of being the next Kurt Vile, too. In between, some Jack White-worthy swings of well-structured slow-motion take hold.

All good things, but this space is well-tilled in 2017; Gallo's gotta find another gear if he's going to get my attention. The best moments are the flashes of deadpan punk resignation - 'why do you have kids?' - 'all that I said was nothing' - and ironically, his best and most memorable sequence, closing out the album begins with 'I will be forgotten in two generations...' Maybe, maybe not 3.5/5

#2517 The Wytches - All Your Happy Life

All that heavy guitar, all that strained moaning, all that production heft - how can it all add up to so little? Much thrashing and wailing, all passing right through you like the unremembered 90's 2.5/5

#2507 Flat Worms - Red Hot Sand

I get flashbacks - to the Vines to England to The Future of the Left to the best of the garage rock revival revival. And that brings that smell of plastic, of oiled manufacture -- but also of sweat, of oil, of futurist grit and freighttrain momentum. And it's that chugging intro, that tension, that Je Suis France Americanism, the force of Men --- a tightening knot of a 5 minute slowburn, and a 2 and a 1 ---- 9 minutes and eight seconds later and I am excited about this fucking band 4.5/5

#2465 Dag Vag - Dag Vag

An enigmatic, fascinating bit of Swedish 70's rock. Reggae-soaked, alternately pretty and inscrutable, with the occasional truly gorgeous guitar solo. Seriously, Va Spelar Det For Roll, that's the sweetest thing I've heard in a long, long time. Uneven, but fascinating - highly recommended to anyone who's heard it all 4/5

#2419 The Standells - The Very Best of the Standells

Everything you could want from garage rock: a dash of proto-punk, plus plenty of organ-drenched psychadelia, with enough dusty rockabilia that you could assume Mainline was just about a train if you didn't listen too close. But there's something bloodless about this - maybe its the flat mix, or the lack of loudness, but it didn't quite light me up 3/5

#2385 The Blue Things - The Blue Things

Folk-rock tipping into psychadelia, familiar enough that you could mistake it for a 60's compilation of unknown bands' minor singles. But it's also got flashes of its own sweet, chugging, rough-edged energy, popping with jittery guitar moves and harmonica flourishes. Another B+ hidden gem 3.5/5

#2450 Meatbodies - Alice

I guess you can't just make big meaty body riffs forever. Ubovich has gone the Ty Segall route, swinging T-Rex glammy one moment, melting into pure drone-sludge the next, generally straying from the clear path of asskicking, to mixed effect. I admire the spirit of adventure, I just wish it was as _good_ as the debut, you know? I guess this is growing up 3.5/5

#2173 Epsilons - Epsilons

Exactly the album you'd expect to find if you plotted the line backwards through Ty Segall's career.

His first real band's first real album, all frantic garagey punk, Segall yelping, guitars chugging, with that rolling 60's organ giving an extra retro spike. Every song's got its mission of self-destruction, throttling at you for a minute or two and out 3.5/5