Ty Segall “Fudge Sandwich” 2018. In The Red Records. Fudge Sandwich is Segall’s fourth release this year and is a foray into Segalling-up rock classics and rarities, which he did excellently on his 2011 EP Ty Rex (with all T. Rex tracks) and on his earlier 2018 release Freedom’s Goblin (most especially the Hot Chocolate ass shaker to end all ass shaking “Every 1′s a Winner”).

Side A (or the Meat’s For Creeps! side) launches with one of the most deranged covers I’ve ever heard, “Low Rider” by War, the original a mellow funkster that Segall has morphed into a terrifying Marilyn Manson meets Kraftwerk industrial hypnosis and it’s freaking awesome. “I’m a Man” originally by Spencer Davis Group, is my favorite kind of Segall-ness: dark, fuzzed out blues boogie. Segall does a rather spot-on vocal match on his cover of John Lennon’s “Isolation” and absolutely slays with his glam take on one of my favorite Funkadelic songs “Hit It and Quit It.” Side A ends with a rather lovely borderline-acoustic and harmonic rendition of the punk “Class War” by The Dils, transforming the song utterly while juxtaposing message and delivery beautifully.

Side B (or the Fudge Don’t Budge! side) starts with a high energy bass-driven rocking version of Neil Young’s “The Loner” and then abruptly changes gears on  “Pretty Miss Titty” (by Gong) which channels the sparse yet psychedelic glam sound he perfected on his Ty Rex EP.  “Archangels Thunderbird” by Amon Duul II is super-deep fuzz and even more glammy psychedelic and Segall’s “Rotten to the Core” by Rudimentary Peni is great straight-up garage punk. One of my favorite covers is “St. Stephen” by the Grateful Dead on which Segall manages to mashup Sex Pistols-Clash style punk with Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” hallucinatory surrealism – fucking mind-blowing. SoundBlab’s review of that track: “I’ve never understood the fascination with Grateful Dead myself. I have no plans to go to war with legions of retro-cruise middle agers convalescing in the Caribbean sunshine. What I can say is that Segall’s version shits all over the Dead version of ‘St Stephen’ especially when he blows a gasket in the outro.” I actually do like Grateful Dead and the original “St. Stephen” but wholeheartedly agree that Segall does manage to shit all over the Dead, in the best way possible. Fudge Sandwich concludes with “Slowboat” by Sparks, an early 70′s style sweet folky number, all flowers and sunshine. As Allmusic says in its review of the album, “Segall didn’t write any of the songs on Fudge Sandwich, but these performances are as much his as anything that’s come from his pen, and if you still need to be convinced that he’s one of the freest and most adventurous minds in contemporary rock & roll, this might just do the trick.”