Ty Segall has been dominating my IPod for the last couple years and I’ll try my best to share what I love about Segall. At 27 years old and with eight solo albums and one more coming next month, collaborations with White Fence and Mikal Cronin, and being part of other bands such as Fuzz, The Traditional Fools, and the Epislons the obvious word to describe Segall is prolific. With a Black Sabbath tattoo on one arm and a Neil Young tattoo on the other, Segall brings some diverse sounds to the table. His sound can be garage rock, ear pounding hard rock with some of the most pleasant screams in rock music, Nuggets style 60s pop psych or dreamy acoustic but no matter what he does he is really good at writing strong songs full of guitar riffs that stick in my head and hooks that I catch myself singing along with. Dude can take some sounds and make it into an interesting pop song.
I'm going to take a look at Segall's (and company) Twins, Slaughterhouse, Hair, and Sleeper as well as some of his other songs that have caught my attention over the next couple days.
The first Ty Segall album I fell hard for was Twins. Twins is a good example of the different sounds of Segall, falling somewhere in between the blistering "Slaughterhouse" and the Beatles influenced "Hair". The approach takes Segall’s favorite sounds of the 60s and 70s and makes them seem relevant to our time.
The opener "Thank God For Sinners" is probably my favorite Segall song. Fuzzy guitars, sweet riffs, a chorus that sticks in your head, the wild jam at the end.. a good synopsis of a lot that is great about Ty. Here's the official video followed by a heavy live version:
"You're the Doctor" is so frenzied while so simultaneously catchy that it makes me dizzy. Pure garage rock bliss. Here's Ty playing it live at Permanent Records as well as the studio version.:
"Inside Your Heart" has a darker vibe than the preceding songs but leads me to a sort of head bobbing trance. I like the sludgy guitars. Here's a live version.
"The Hill" intermingles a psychedelic Beatles sound with the heavy fuzzy guitars. The video is appropriately weird.
"Would You Be My Love" finds more fuzzy guitars intertwined with Lennon type vocals and Segall longing for a lady to love him. Here's the studio version.
"Ghost" is a fuzzy reverb filled slow jam.
"They Told Me Too" is more chaos with some glam rock with ear catching drums while "Love Fuzz" slows it down but keeps the glam sound.
(NSFW)
"Handglams" is a great example of Segall taking falsetto vocals and mixing them with head pounding power chords. Live version (with the falsetto dialed back) below:
"Who are You" sounds like something that could fit on a Nuggets comp if it weren't for the blistering guitar. Fun drums in this one too.
"Gold on the Shore" is the first acoustic number on Twins and is a nice psych folk tune which gives a good idea of what 2013's Sleeper sounds like.
The Sid Barrett influenced psych song "There is No Tomorrow" closes out the album in fine fashion.
From Pitchfork's review of Twins http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17133-twins/:
His final "thank you" in the liner notes goes to Neil Young, an artist who, as soon as the masses pegged him with a genre, did whatever the fuck he wanted to do and didn't look back; who never compromised on his vision, even when it meant making a bizarre, shitty rockabilly album in 1983; who famously "headed for the ditch" when he felt his radio hits were "middle of the road." Twins doesn't stick to the middle or even pick a lane. It swerves, visiting territory well-tread with a perspective that feels new, and knowing Segall, he probably won't make another album that sounds like it any time soon.
