{"id":23028,"date":"2022-05-29T05:30:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T09:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23028"},"modified":"2022-11-07T07:46:52","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T12:46:52","slug":"ep-review-the-fuzztones-encore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/29\/ep-review-the-fuzztones-encore\/","title":{"rendered":"EP Review The Fuzztones – Encore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For forever now, The Fuzztones have been bringing their trademark version of garage punk to enthusiastic listeners. In recent years, main Fuzztone Rudi Protrudi has turned his focus toward tributes, books and films, all of which have helped to cement the group\u2019s place in rock\u2019n\u2019roll firmament. What there hasn\u2019t been a lot of is new \u2013 truly new \u2013 music from the band. Here at Musoscribe World Headquarters, we\u2019re happy to grade on a curve as it were, owing to the difficulties brought on by the two-years-and-counting global youknowwhat.<\/p>\n

A new EP from The Fuzztones serves up a bit of new material alongside archival recordings that haven\u2019t previously seen the light of day. Taken as a whole, they\u2019re a solid reminder of what makes The Fuzztones special, and they whet appetites for more new music.<\/p>\n

Encore opens with a new track, \u201cBarking Up the Wrong Tree.\u201d Now, I don\u2019t know that the world was clamoring for an \u201cI\u2019m not gay so no thanks\u201d kind of song, but that\u2019s what this is. Lyrics aside, it sounds like a \u201866 classic. The remainder of the disc serves up covers of songs so obscure, even the most inveterate aficionado of Nuggets<\/i>, Pebbles<\/i>, Back from the Grave<\/i> and so forth may find something new. \u201cPlastic People\u201d isn\u2019t the Mothers\u2019 tune; it\u2019s a malevolent number originally cut by hard psych rockers Wildwood.<\/p>\n

The heavily-reverbed \u201cMarble Hall\u201d was originally recorded by a Canadian band of the same name, released in 1970. Its slow pace is a bit outside The Fuzztones\u2019 typical wheelhouse, but they deliver it in style. Much closer to the tried and true Fuzztones aesthetic is \u201cEyes in the Back of My Head,\u201d first cut by fellow modern-day garage-psych travelers The Bevis Frond. Like most of the tracks on this EP, the band is Protrudi overdubbing guitar, bass and vocals, plus keyboardist Lana Loveland and drummer Marco Rivagli.<\/p>\n

\u201cLand of Nod\u201d was originally recorded by Rare Earth, and the Fuzztones \u2013 here augmented by additional players including The Stooges\u2019 Andy MacKay \u2013 take the tune at full throttle. The arrangement would have fit seamlessly on Horny as Hell<\/i>. The disc-proper concludes with the most well-known tune so far, The Pretty Things\u2019 \u201cAlexander.\u201d That band\u2019s Wally Waller joining on bass guitar. The Fuzztones\u2019 reading won\u2019t replace the original, but it\u2019s energetic and well-executed.<\/p>\n

For reasons that remain unclear, the physical EP adds two bonus tracks (the streaming version includes only one). A version of \u201cLet\u2019s Live for Today\u201d is noted as \u201cfeaturing The Grass Roots,\u201d but neither the CD package nor the press one-sheet explains the nature of that band\u2019s participation. The song is played straight, with bits of fuzz guitar accenting an arrangement that\u2019s ultimately quite faithful to the original. A more interesting approach might have been to cover The Lyres’ “Not Looking Back,” a song that quotes the Grass Roots song’s signature lick during a keyboard solo.<\/p>\n

And a cover of The Sonics\u2019 \u201cSanta Claus\u201d \u2013 itself a thin rewrite of The Premiers\u2019 \u201cFarmer John\u201d (itself<\/i> a retread of \u201cLouie, Louie\u201d if we\u2019re being honest) \u2013 ends the set with a bit of tail-chasing. Played with verve and plenty of distortion, it\u2019s a delight. Unpretentious as it is, the song underscores the fact that while there may not be much new under the sun in the land of garage rock, it\u2019s still plenty of fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For forever now, The Fuzztones have been bringing their trademark version of garage punk to enthusiastic listeners. In recent years, main Fuzztone Rudi Protrudi has turned his focus toward tributes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,33,49,59,65],"tags":[873],"class_list":["post-23028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-garage","category-new-release","category-punk","category-review","tag-fuzztones","cat-19-id","cat-33-id","cat-49-id","cat-59-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23028"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24183,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028\/revisions\/24183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}