Posted in Whathaveyou on August 29th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Is this just an excuse to write more about Fatso Jetson? Yeah, it is. And no, this is not the grandest tour I’ve posted about this year or probably even this week, but hell, anytime Fatso Jetson blink, I pretty much want to put fingers to keyboard about it. The long-running desert rock co-progenitors are headed out for five shows alongside All Souls — with whom they not only share drummer Tony Tornay but also the recent live split LP Live From Total Annihilation (review here) — and High Desert Queen wedged in the middle there.
It’s essentially a long-weekender, and that’s just fine. Fatso Jetson‘s Dino Von Lalli will follow suit from Tornay and pull double-duty for the final night of the tour at Transplants Brewery, playing in his other band, BigPig as well. That’s right, double-double-duty. It’s that kind of thing. Meanwhile, All Souls continue to herald their upcoming album, Ghosts Among Us, in addition to the live split, and Austin-based rockers High Desert Queen — whose Ryan Garney may or may not have booked the tour, as he will do for his own band as well as others and RippleFest Texas, which All Souls and High Desert Queen both played this year — spread the good word of their Ripple-issued 2021 debut album, Secrets of the Black Moon (review here), while making one look forward to what’s invariably next.
So there you have it. Cool bands doing stuff together. Could hardly be more straightforward than that. And if it’s not 30 shows on back to back nights and blah blah blah? Fine.
From social media:
FATSO JETSON – Oct. Cali Shows
So Cal October Rock Safari!!
We’ll be out playing some fun shows with our friends High Desert Queen, All Souls and the mighty BigPig… go forth and nightclub
Wed 10/19: Costa Mesa- Wayfarer Thur 10/20: Highland Park Bowl Fri 10/21: Sky Valley Eric’s Ranch Sat 10/22: Old Town Pub Pasadena Sun 10/23: Palmdale CA- Transplants
[All Souls and Fatso Jetson release Live From Total Annihilation Aug. 19 on Ripple Music. Stream it in full above, find the complete video below. Ripple has preorders here.]
In the lonely middle of the Year of Our Lungs 2021, All Souls and Fatso Jetson aired the livestream (review here) that would become their joint LP release, Live From Total Annihilation. At the time, it was called ‘Virtual Volumes’ in relation to Fatso Jetson‘s 2010 album, Archaic Volumes (discussed here; review here), and the two four-pieces played with masks on with All Souls in color and Fatso Jetson in black and white, an atmosphere tense like everything but clearly a case of two bands wanting to do what they could in the absence of live shows. Helpful in regards to minimizing personnel involved, the two bands share drummer Tony Tornay, who no doubt has pulled double-duty many times over, but did as well when these two groups toured the UK together in 2017. Eddie Rivas from Total Annihilation Studio recorded and mixed, there were projected lightshows, multiple cameras, and so on. It wasn’t a concert, but they made a quality product. And particularly given how the audio came out, it’s not a surprise they’d follow up with a live album release.
AllSouls got to play five songs, one new, Fatso Jetson did five, two new, and of the many hours I spent in front of my laptop watching bands play instead of attending concerts or festivals, it was not one I regretted in the least. Thinking of Live From Total Annihilation as a split, the 43-minute LP gets down to business almost immediately with “Who Holds the Answer,” which gave and still gives an early glimpse of what’s since been announced as All Souls‘ third studio album, Ghosts Among Us, out in October (info here). And true to form for them across 2020’s Songs for the End of the World (review here) and 2018’s self-titled debut (review here), “Who Holds the Answer” packs expansive and jammy vibes into a structured three-and-a-half-minute song that’s heavy rock and post-punk and also neither of them and a whole bunch else. They back it with the salvo of “You Just Can’t Win” and “Winds” from the second record, two highlight cuts together that here flow immediately one into the next, the latter providing a tonal highlight for the outing as a whole and a first unclenched minute for All Souls, who even as they unfurl the more open feeling in the second half of “You Just Can’t Win” held the tension in the rhythm from the earlier part of the song.
“Winds” is probably also the best argument for All Souls as a four-piece, though it’s by no means their only song putting two guitars to dynamic use. Matt Price (Behold! the Monolith) was new on second guitar alongside Antonio Aguilar (also vocals), the aforementioned Tornay — who, for all the melodic wash and ambience around him gives a definitive performance on drums for “Wings”; style and technique — and bassist/vocalist Meg Castellanos, but the track’s complexity and depth even in a ‘live’ setting make it clearer why even after Price left the lineup issue still isn’t really settled for the band. They punk out on “Sentimental Rehash” like it’s 2001 again — hey, wait a minute! — and use that shimmy to reground the set before “Time Bomb” from the debut caps with purpose in its vocal melody, insistence in its groove and a kick of volume at the start that lets you know you’ve arrived. It turns somewhat more severe, the air gets heavier, the guitar solos cascade into noise, but not-doing-just-one-thing and not-doing-the-same-thing-all-the-time are trademarks of All Souls‘ work to this point and one would expect no less.
As regards an act who function solely on their own terms, it’s kind of astonishing how little one can know what’s coming when Fatso Jetson take the stage. Not only have they been around for nearly 30 years — long enough that guitarist/vocalist Mario Lalli‘s son, Dino von Lalli, has been in the band now for the better part of the last decade — but their work is so varied that they could put together representative sets for four different kinds of groups and you’d still come out of it saying “hot shit, what a band.” For Live From Total Annihilation, the new song “Drifting Off to Storybook Deth” sets the tone for what follows, with a methodical six minutes of mellow, methodical groove, bassist Larry Lalli reminding where the weight in Fatso Jetson comes from as Mario and Dino space out rhythm and lead tracks and Tornay continues to hold it together with a same-day-different-band-no-problem-who-else-needs-drums fluidity.
“Drifting Off to Storybook Deth” picks up in terms of getting louder, but the mood remains broad and leads into “Monoxide Dreams” from Archaic Volumes, furthering the languid sensibility of the first track while proving deceptive in its efficiency not unlike All Souls‘ “Who Holds the Answer,” fitting a lot of reach into about the same amount of time. “Monoxide Dreams” reminds how undervalued Mario Lalli (also in the instrumental Yawning Man) is as a vocalist, and it’s fitting the band’s personality that the weirdo-jazz-bounce of the not-a-word-in-it “Dream Homes” follows, the band reaffirming their longstanding commitment to chicanery. Missing from the stream is “Living All Over You,” and the songs have been rearranged, but the fuzzy pulse and vocal harmonies of “Long Deep Breaths” round out to give Fatso Jetson‘s side B not a comedown, but a flow and progression of its own in mini-album style. At five and a half minutes, it’s shorter than “Drifting Off to Storybook Deth,” but there’s still plenty of time for it to get its point across, echoing the drifting beginning and keeping enough movement for the whole thing to be comprehensible as a single work.
This stream was a gift when it was badly needed, and though the shape of the covid-19 pandemic has changed and live music has returned albeit not without risk of exposure, Live From Total Annihilation documents the event, gives both bands a bit of momentum going into whatever’s next — new record certainly for All Souls, maybe one in the works for Fatso Jetson as well? — and serves as a reminder of how precious it is to be able to have people in a room together for the sake of live performance and art. If you didn’t miss that, what’s the point of anything?
All Souls & Fatso Jetson, ‘Virtual Volumes’ livestream
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 18th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Yo, I don’t even care about the release date. Just hook this one directly up to my veins like Barney and beer truck. So good. I watched these sets when they premiered as the ‘Virtual Volumes’ live stream (review here), and even watching Fatso Jetson and All Souls — who share drummer Tony Tornay between them, further minimizing personnel — jam out with masks on was a righteous experience. Live From Total Annihilation will be issued as a split LP in both acts’ first collaboration with Ripple Music — who should also step up and put out the next All Souls already; come on — and from where I sit huddled into the same corner of the same couch where I was when I first saw and heard the thing, it remains an utter no-brainer pickup. August release? Great, that’ll work. Can’t tell you what a precious reminder this one was to just watch bands be in a place and hit it. And the audio was ace. It’ll make a great live split.
From the PR wire:
LEGENDARY DESERT ROCK INNOVATORS FATSO JETSON JOIN RIPPLE MUSIC FOR UPCOMING NEW RELEASE
Ripple Music is psyched to announce that seminal desert rock innovators FATSO JETSON are joining the Ripple roster! Their new outing is a split release with fellow Californians All Souls, with both bands recording their contributions live in the studio during the pandemic lockdown.
Fatso Jetson is an iconic American desert rock band from Palm Desert, California, formed in 1994 by Yawning Man members Mario Lalli and Larry Lalli, along with Tony Tornay. They are often credited as the fathers of the desert strain of stoner rock later made most famous by their slightly younger neighbors Kyuss and, later, Queens of the Stone Age. While musically similar to some of their brethren, Fatso Jetson have always branched out and expanded the desert sound by incorporating a broader variety of musical influences including punk, jazz and surf.
Fatson Jetson have toured the world several times, with highly regarded appearances at festivals like SXSW, Roadburn, DesertFest Berlin, DesertFest London, and RippleFest Texas, even appearing in the Foo Fighters’ HBO miniseries Sonic Highways.
Paired with Tony Tornay’s other band All Souls, Live from Total Annihilation is the new split release from Fatso Jetson, following in a long line of highly regarded splits from the band. Live from Total Annihilation finds Lalli, Tornay and the rest of the band in fine form, tearing through four classic desert-rocking tracks.
Look for the split to be released this august on Ripple Music.
