Friday Full-Length: Fatso Jetson, Toasted
Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 25th, 2019 by JJ KoczanIf Nietzsche went beyond good and evil, then surely Fatso Jetson exist beyond weird and normal. They’re often credited as one of the principal founding acts of desert rock, and fair enough, but they’ve also always held a spot on a wavelength of their own, no less comfortable in strains of bizarre prog, manic surf-jazz or punk than in floor-of-hot-coals boogie. Their third album, Toasted, was recorded in 1998 for release through Bong Load Custom Records and was their first outing not to be issued by SST, whose founder Greg Ginn (also Black Flag), as legend has it, signed them on the strength of their first show for their 1995 debut, Stinky Little Gods and its 1997 follow-up, Power of Three. The latter title sums up an essential component of Fatso Jetson‘s strength, as it’s the power of the players involved in the band that’s always made them so head-spinningly good. Others have come and gone over time including family and friends, but the core trio of guitarist/vocalist Mario Lalli (also Yawning Man), bassist Larry Lalli and drummer Tony Tornay (now also of All Souls) has remained at the foundation of Fatso Jetson for the last quarter-century, and they remain an act unto themselves in style and substance alike.
Plenty of bands talk about being open in terms of creativity. Anything goes. Far fewer actually bring that to life in their output, but listening to Fatso Jetson immediately separate wheat from chaff in their listenership as Toasted opener “New Age Android” turns to biting freakout robot sounds on (I think) guitar, or the subsequent swinger “Magma” and the maddening multi-layered solo that would round out if they weren’t actually in control enough to turn back to the chorus at the end, the band make it plain right away that their scope isn’t one to be limited. Not that they’re inconsistent — Toasted, which was produced by the band with Chris Goss of Masters of Reality, flows easily from one song to the next — but that there’s a naturalistic component to what they do and the instrumental chemistry so much on display between the Lalli cousins and Tornay is a key uniting factor in their craft. Through the weighted garage thrust of “I’ve Got the Shame” and into the instrumental “She’s So Borg” that seems to complement “New Age Android” — the lyrics of which could be argued as prescient of the rise of mobile social media culture; self-as-product and all that — Fatso Jetson go where they want to go and have the means to get there, but even the fact that “She’s So Borg” is in conversation with the opener, without actually including words, while hinting toward it in the titles demonstrates just how conscious the band were at the time of what they were doing. Fatso Jetson always had a master plan, it was just on a wavelength all its own.
At their most frenetic, they are blindingly intense, and even when they lock into a groove as on “Swollen Offering,” they have the ability to utterly blindside their audience with changes. Toasted skronks out with some spoken word in the second half of “Swollen Offering” and pushes into full-on what-the-fuckery before the instrumental “Tutta Dorma” presents a bit of chill, which of course is a setup for “Rail Job” to sprint through its sub-two-minutes with maximum drive, leading to the mid-paced semi-stomp-into-psychedelia of “Procrastination Process” and the return to fits and starts of the instrumental finale “Too Many Skulls.” It’s a side B dense enough to be an entire full-length for most bands, but Fatso Jetson emerge, sweaty perhaps, but otherwise unscathed, and seem to look around after “Too Many Skulls” crashes into its finish and ask, “Okay, so what’ve you got for that?”
That’s pretty much the challenge Fatso Jetson are putting out there, especially in their earlier work — the first three records. Here’s who we are, what’ve you got for it? Though they did plenty of them along the way — including, in this era, with Fu Manchu, The Bloodshot and Fireball Ministry — they do not sound like a band with whom one would want to release a split, because contrary to the narrative of the laid back ideal of desert rock, Fatso Jetson are right in your face, and Toasted has a confrontational aspect to the music that’s unmistakable in its intent. Think of jazz soloists trying to outdo one another, and that might be Fatso Jetson on a bill with whoever. And as amorphous as it is, their style has always been recognizable, and no matter where they’ve taken it, they’ve done so with that core chemistry and no shortage of rough-hewn class that, even in their most willfully abrasive moments, serves as another crucial uniting factor. Plus, man, fuckin’ Tony Tornay on drums? God damn.
After recording Toasted, Fatso Jetson released Flames for All on Man’s Ruin Records in 1999 and Cruel and Delicious on Rekords Rekords (an imprint belonging to Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age) in 2001. They’d put out Live in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2010’s Archaic Volumes (review here) that they had another studio album, and though splits followed with Yawning Man, Herba Mate (review here) and Farflung (review here), and Toasted saw reissue in 2012, their next full-length was 2016’s Idle Hands (review here) on Heavy Psych Sounds. They’ve grown to meld psychedelic impulses and astro-jazz into their whatever-the-hell-they-want-to-do maturity of craft, and the last album found them bringing in Dino von Lalli (son to Mario; also of BigPig) on guitar to round out a four-piece lineup. As Mario Lalli splits time with Yawning Man and Tornay hit the road last year with All Souls, Fatso Jetson have been playing here and there but largely quiet since a late-2016 split with del-Toros (discussed here) in terms of studio work. I wouldn’t call them dormant, since they’ve toured regularly, but there’s been little word of new material kicked around and it may be a few years yet before they get another record together. Or it might be next month. 25 years later, who dare to predict Fatso Jetson?
Thanks for reading, and as always, I hope you enjoy.
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I have some cool stuff coming up next week — track premieres for Green Lung and Straytones and a video from Doctor Sax — but there’s other stuff I can’t talk about yet too, so you’ll hopefully indulge me if I don’t do proper notes this week. Keeping secrets, I guess. Not that anyone’s waiting with bated breath to know what I’ll be writing about, but please take my word for it when I say it’s going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
On Monday morning, The Patient Mrs., The Pecan and I hightailed it out of New Jersey. There was supposed to be a snowstorm that would’ve maybe kept us there an extra day — I wouldn’t have complained — but it dusted, and then was cold, and that was it. Don’t get me wrong, it was pain-in-the-ass cold, but it’s January and you have to live with that possibility. I loaded the car and off we went early in the morning, The Patient Mrs. doing the first shift of driving so I could finish putting together the news posts for the day, because that’s how I do.
She went back to work this week, did The Patient Mrs., for the start of classes for the Spring semester. She’s got tenure coming through this term, which is just the latest of many examples of her next-level utter goddamn brilliance, but it’s academia, so there are all kinds of hoops she’s had to jump through and it’s like a months-long wait for it to actually happen. These people wear robes and do everything slow as hell. It’s like if Sunn O))) could grant degrees.
The Fightin’ Dronies.
That’s what that university’s team would be called.
Anyway.
So we’re back in Massachusetts. I won’t lie, it was nice to come back and get the last four weeks’ worth of mail, but beyond that I’m hardly stoked at the return to New England. Seeing that Pecan get to know my family more and start to interact more with them and just have more space to run around and climb on stuff — which he does constantly; we have to overturn the chairs in the kitchen or he’ll be up on the table; he’s 15 months old today — was a joy. We’ll be back down there for spring break (woo!) in March and then again for at least most of the summer, but yeah. Kind of isolated up here.
At the same time, while I haven’t been looking forward to The Patient Mrs. going back to work, because, you know, I love her and enjoy spending time with her and all that, I have been excited to have more one-on-one time with the baby. He’s a monumental pain in the ass, like, wow, but fun. We read books together and go places and I get him out of the house and he gets me out of the house and some parts are challenging and some parts are a good time and some parts are boring and some parts are heart-racing — did I mention he’s a climber? — but I can’t ignore the fact of how lucky I am to be able to stay home with him, and I feel very much like what I’m doing now in terms of writing as much as I can and balancing that with daddy-time is the kind of work I was meant to be doing all along. He’s a madman, and there are definitely times where I just need to check out for a coupe minutes and get my head back, but that’s all part of the thing. Plus I get to make jokes — mostly to myself — about “dad rock,” and that’s fun too.
Well, it’s about quarter after five, and I expect he’ll be awake before six, so I’m going to punch out and get the day’s first post live before he’s up. I hope you have a great and safe weekend, and thanks again for reading. Really, stay tuned for next week. It’s going to be special.
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