Day 53: Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart

Marc Bolan was the self-proclaimed Dandy of the Underworld and even though I think he died in a car wreck decades ago I'm not sure he really died. If you want evidence of this consider how convincingly he's been brought to life by tireless Bay Area garage rocker Ty Segall, who, instead of being content with just a T. Rex cover or two, decided to record a whole album's worth. Ty's a great songwriter in his own right, but I appreciate the study he undertook here, and some of these tracks he re-engineers so that they hit even harder than the originals. If you listen to these and then the covers for comparison, you can hear Ty doing some interesting things with the timing, stripping out the shambolic folk swagger and putting them on a more straightforward rhythm track, while also stretching out words and emphasizing different beats to create something new. Two outstanding musicians, but in some way their fate is one.