Sour Fuzz Are Growly and Huge on “Bide My Time”
Over a century ago, Mark Twain said, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
In short, there’s nothing new under the sun, and today’s rock-and-rollers are tasked with Frankensteining their own sound from yesteryear.
In the case of Sour Fuzz, their selection of reference material is mind-blowing. Their execution is flawless. Their new single, “Bide My Time,” combines the acid-soaked sounds of the late 1960s garage rock with the nihilistic frenzy of the skate punk 1990s.
Harold Spaulding and Justin Dobbelaar (of Perfect By Tomorrow indie-reggae cred) assembled over quarantine boredom and jammed a few genres before landing on their surf/skate/punk rock sound, and everything clicked into place. Their previous singles, “How Does It Feel?” and “Wide Eyed,” are both scuzzy lo-fi rockers somewhere between Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris.
“Bide My Time” is a big step forward.
From its palm-muted 16th-note chugged opening to its tape-delayed staccato outro, Sour Fuzz sounds like they’re transmitting this single from another dimension. A groovier one.
It's a nostalgic sound, but one that forces you to remember what rock music used to be about. The guitars are growly and huge, with feedback that haunts only the coolest house shows and sweaty punk basements. It's melodic without pretense, energetic but serene. This song grabs you by the scruff of the neck and forces your ear right up to the speaker.
There are guitar licks sick enough to pout the lips of the arm-crossing cool guys in the back, urgent drumming that never lets up, and a syncopated interplay between the tube-tinged vocals and the rhythm section.
“Bide My Time” shows a deep enthusiasm for Sour Fuzz’s influences. These guys sound like they’ve spent many a late-night hour in animated debate about guitar fuzz tone and deep cuts from the psychedelic, skate, surf, and garage scenes. It has the grime and scuzz of their sonic forefathers but with a trippy hopscotch between hi- and lo-fi.
Massive points to Seattle’s Starlight Studios for keeping Sour Fuzz’s space-cadet stoner aesthetics without sacrificing punk’s whiplashed frenetics. This studio knows how to crank vocal distortion and tape-delay feedback without muddying the mix, and when exactly to stomp a flanger pedal. “Bide My Time” is ear-friendly, but still reeks like a high school dropout’s jean jacket.
Sour Fuzz is a tightrope walk in several ways. They pay their respects to West Coast beach bums, scrape resin from the pipes of desert rockers, raid the record bin of 1960s arthouse blowhards, and congregate beneath the bleachers of the Brit-pop giants. All without sounding derivative or sentimental.
If creating new art is shifting a kaleidoscope, Sour Fuzz is loading that thing with stained glass shards from rock’s most sacred temples and cranking it like a tube amp doused in diesel.