Fractured

Album Review

For their first album in several years, Athens-based garage rockers the Woggles chose to record a loose and sloppy live-in-the-studio set produced by Guadalcanal Diary's Jeff Walls. It would be fair to call the Woggles a Southern-fried version of New York's Nuggets-obsessed Fleshtones, except that the Fleshtones haven't done a record as deliriously frazzled and unselfconscious as Fractured in years. The songs are so perfectly simple, like the faux-exotica "Takamatsu Twist" and the whiny garage rock of "Believe Me Little Girl," that a manic cover of Bobby Freeman's "C'Mon and Swim" slots in like an original. The addition of an adjunct member, the Flesh Hammer, and his organ and piano contributions to about half the album — not to mention some swell theremin on the sci-fi/surf anthem "The Kingdom of Nye" — really opens up the band's sound considerably, adding new instrumental textures that keep the album fresh and exciting.