Lil Jon in 2017. Courtesy Interscope Records. Footbaaaaaaaaall! Back in 2019, in the Before Times, I celebrated the start of the NFL season with five classic jock jams. It was a great idea for an annual feature! Then the 2020 season was weird on account of the plague, then…

FUZZ (Ty Segall, Charles Moothart, Chad Ubovich), “III.” Among noise buffs, fuzz is considered the most extreme form of distortion, often completely blowing out a signal with staticky white noise (think of the bass sound that begins Norm Greenbaum’s 1969 hit “Spirit in the Sky”). Similarly, among Ty Segall…

Ty Segall, “First Taste.” Ty Segall is a very busy man. The Laguna Beach garage rocker filled last year with Freedom’s Goblins, covers album Fudge Sandwich and his collaboration with White Fence, Joy. First Taste clarifies once again that Segall has yet to spread himself too thin, slathering on his brand of fuzzed-out, dirty…

Jack White got famous for doing a lot with very little. As one half of The White Stripes, he became known for the earnest simplicity of his songs. His DIY approach and powerfully emotional music placed the Detroit native in a liminal musical space conjuring both Kurt Cobain and…

The White Stripes trying to remember if they are spouses or siblings. Regular readers of this column may have noticed that I’ve included a song off every single Metallica studio album in the top five, and a song from every non-studio Metallica album in the Honorable Mentions. You may…