Everybody’s favorite German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (nobody can understand the rest of ‘em) once wrote, “The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” If so, Wasted Shirt, the new collaboration between Ty Segall and Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale, has integrity coming out the wazoo.
Listening to Wasted Shirt’s 2020 release Fungus II brings to mind the scene in Apocalypse Now where Colonel Kurtz says, “Are my methods unsound?” To which Capt. Willard replies, “I don’t see any method at all, sir.” Like Kurtz, the only method Wasted Shirt adheres to is chaos. (But let us tread carefully here; chaos can be a method too.)
The music of Wasted Shirt alienates most human beings, probably because we’ve been genetically programmed and behaviorally conditioned to prefer predictability and pattern over an inchoate din expressly designed to induce Edvard Munch Scream Face. Listening to Wasted Shirt requires that one completely rewire one’s mental circuitry to the extent that the only music one can stand listening to is Wasted Shirt.
I’m not quite there yet myself–I still enjoy listening to Black Oak Arkansas and the occasional smash hit by the Doobie Brothers. But I tried listening John and Yoko’s Double Fantasy the other night and it made me puke. though come to think of it Double Fantasy has always sent me running for the toilet.
The great thing about liking Wasted Shirt is that it grants you instant admission to one of the world’s most exclusive fraternities. By sheer dint of sustained unlistenability, Wasted Shirt has alienated just everybody, so if you’ve been looking to opt out of the human race this is your chance. At last count the Wasted Shirt Society boasted maybe nine members, Henry Rollins among them. But something tells me Henry’s only saying he likes them because they’re paying him–give the guy 10 bucks and he’ll say anything.
I’ve heard bigger caterwauls–compared to German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann’s 1968 LP Machine Gun, Fungus II is St. Joseph Baby Noise. And there are some disappointing moments on Fungus II when form emerges from chaos. “Four Strangers Enter the Cement at Dusk” is nothing more than a grinding Black Sabbath riff that does more repeating than a washing machine, while “Zeppelin 5″ comes dangerously close to something you might actually want to listen to–the boys even hum along.
I love this stuff–as will fans of Lightning Bolt and Ty Segall’s noisier stuff–but loving it doesn’t mean I listen to it. I barely listened to Fungus II while writing this, and I intend never to listen to it again. This places it amongst the ranks of such unlistenable masterpieces as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Painkiller’s Guts of a Virgin, The Stooges’ “L.A. Blues,” Othrelm’s OV, and Captain & Tenille’s Love Will Keep Us Together. I admire them all as radical avant-garde statements expressly created to expand the horizons of art, and never fail to run when I hear them coming.
I have but one caveat about Wasted Shirt. Unlike my favorite noise rock outfits Wasted Shirt doesn’t make me laugh (although they probably laughed their asses off making Fungus II). That said, I see signs of progress; Lightning Bolt’s 2019 release Sonic Citadel includes such great song titles as “Van Halen 2049,” “Husker Don’t,” and “Don Henley in the Park.” Let’s hope the guys in Wasted Shirt do more work in this vein. The world’s always in need of more noise–so far as I’m concerned there should be a jackhammer on every street corner–and laughs are always thin on the ground.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
