Review Summary: A true garage-rock gem.
God, I just love the word 'lemons'. Both its sound, as well as the visuals that come with it (which consist mostly of lemons, but damn, I love lemons too.) So, after getting familiar with Ty's work with Fuzz, it was only fitting that "Lemons" would be the first among his other 1035 records that I'd give the honor to listen to.
And man, did I have a blast! The record is short, sweet, ridiculously catchy, stupendously alive, and just zooper dooper, capital-F Fun.
Naysayers could argue that it's underwritten, or even a 'transitional' work (I know, right?). Well, they are not 100% wrong, yet the thing is that Lemons is indeed what you may call 'underwritten', but only in all the right ways.
I mean, it's not "drifting along aimlessly/almost getting there" underwritten. More of a "no-buildups, no-fadedowns, no-bridges and utterly no-bull***" kind of underwritten. Just pure, stomping, constant rock'n'roll energy. All the fat is trimmed down, and you only get left with hook after hook business.
The guy's just happy playing his little tunes, and he sounds like a very nice fella. "In Your Car" is all X-rated lustful heaviness, "Rusted Dust" is a beautiful, vaguely psychedelic Nirvana-esque ballad, and there's a freaky badass cover of "Dropout Boogie", which easily ranks among Captain Beefheart's best songs.
You also get a wicked surf instrumental ("Untitled #2"), and a minute-and-a-half assault at all senses ("Johnny").
All in all, the record is really lo-fi, with all of its 26 minutes drenched in tons of fuzzy distortion, cheap echo and reverb, and this fact alone could put some people off. But the songwritting and playing more than make up for it.
So, to any brother out there who's into pure, noisy, shameless garage-rock music (and not the phony 00's attempts at its "revival"), you might as well give Lemons a try.
