Rob’s Album Of The Week: Timmy’s Organism’s Heartless Heathen
Every music scene has a few talented musicians floating under the radar. Look at a guy like Timmy Vulgar, a stalwart of Detroit’s illustrious garage rock & punk scene who cut his teeth as the frontman for acts like The Epileptix, Clone Defects and Human Eye. Vulgar has been doing things his way for quite some time while putting out music that’s just as good as the stuff from The White Stripes and The Dirtbombs. He also has a solo project called Timmy’s Organism that’s been rolling along since the late 2000s, and he has a new album due off it called Heartless Heathen that’ll be out on October 30 via Third Man Records. With bassist Jeff Grant and drummer Blake Hill rounding out a trio on the album, Vulgar has a lot of soul and a lot of psych that makes for a rad recording adorned with plenty of hooks and intensity.
A heavy amount of distortion and reverb covers Heartless Heathen like a sheen of electric mud on top of a beat-up chair. There’s a raw and rigid sound that gives a no-frills approach; Vulgar is going to blow your face off whether you like it or not. I dig the solos from Vulgar’s guitar a lot; his pure talent with each riff shouldn’t go unnoticed and provides a proper introduction to anyone who isn’t familiar with Vulgar’s work. By the time you’re done listening to Heartless Heathen, you’re going to want to raid your local record store and the lovely Internet for everything and anything that he’s touched.
Among all the craziness, one thing that’s beautiful about 2015 is that hard-working musicians finally have a wider audience to discover them. To know what to properly enjoy from Timmy’s Organism’s upcoming album, check out my top tracks off of the Album Of The Week.
An absolute rager, “Back In The Dungeon” is about Vulgar back in the basement rocking out and making the place shake, the perfect noisemaker for your senses to indulge in. One track that is different from the rest is “Please Don’t Be Going;” there’s a certain Motown R&B quality in the chorus that I enjoy and I think you’d enjoy too. Badass in so many ways, “Weather Woman” is a rhythm crusher that ups the ante with an incredible level of fuzz and distortion from start to finish.
Timmy’s Organism will embark on a tour of the Southwest, Midwest and West Coast starting at Kaiju in Louisville on October 29 and ending with a hometown homecoming at The UFO Factory in Detroit on November 25. Unfortunately they won’t be hitting up New England this time around, but let’s hope they’ll come through these parts sometime next year. Until then, grab a copy of Heartless Heathen when it’s released at the end of October. It’ll rev up your senses without any pretenses. Stream “Weather Woman” here: https://soundcloud.com/thirdmanrecords/weather-woman/
Timmy’s Organism on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timmys.organism