Attack of the Garage Goblins: How Ty Segall Made Everyone a Winner
Not a lot of double albums get released these days, particularly not in garage rock, a genre known for its raw energy and simple song structure. But somehow, Ty Segall, a man already responsible for putting out at least one album every year since 2007, found he had more songs than he knew what to do with, and devised a way to cram them into a package that is as sensible and fully-formed as it is truly excellent, in every Bill & Ted sense of that word.
Freedom’s Goblin
Ty Segall & Freedom Band
Psychedelic Garage Rock | 2018
For the last few days, dissecting this massive tome seemed too overwhelming. 90% of Ty Segall’s songs are under five minutes, and yet here he has 75-minutes-worth of them. So, for the sake of my fingers, and your eyeballs, we will forgo the track-by-track breakdown to focus on the truly majestic cream of the crop (please do not misconstrue this to mean the other songs aren’t good, THEY’RE ALL GOOD; this is just the thin margin between A and A+).
Ty Segall, for those who are unfamiliar, is the Laguna Beach musical prodigy that has been consistently present in the garage rock and psych rock revival scenes since his underground days releasing self-recorded cassette tapes. If you have listened to him, you are no doubt also familiar with Thee Oh Sees, another psych-garage-rock band from California that has a similar prolificacy and penchant for… weird album covers (be prepared for a different rewind later this year), and so will not be surprised to hear that John Dwyer (of TOS) and Segall are besties who met when Dwyer offered to release Segall’s first self-titled album on his label way back in 2008.
From that day, Segall went on to release 14 studio albums under his own name (so far), three with the band Fuzz (hopefully so far), and a near-uncountable number of EPs, split EPs, and non-album singles. And while all are certainly within the confines of the garage-/psych-rock oeuvre, they all veer wildly in style, tone, instrumentation, and concept. 2012’s Slaughterhouse, a personal favorite, and objectively one the the top five albums of that year, dabbles in combining reverbed lo-fi production with a hardcore punk-style of songwriting and blasting guitars. While 2016’s Emotional Mugger (perhaps the most “famous” of Segall’s creepy album covers) is an experiment in every type of bad trip that is as intoxicating as it is…slightly off-putting.
But in 2018, Segall dared to take every single musical thought he had and put it in one album. Normally, with any other artist, that would spell a disastrous hodgepodge of poorly produced sounds with no cohesive structure. But with Ty Segall, it’s still incredibly random, but in a much cooler, mathematical way that’s ambitious, tuneful, and fully bloomed.
Fanny Dog
Kicking the record off, Ty sings an ode to his…dog, with a conviction usually reserved for love ballads, powerfully blasting his vocals praising her ability to know her name, come when called, stay, and love him even when he’s down. The music is a sharp change from his usual guitar-driven punk aesthetics, instead opting for a bombastic horn section as if all of San Francisco is marching in a parade celebrating her. His message—and the song’s production—is so clear and convincing that you’ll be ready to pick up your trumpet and march right along with them. Fanny is indeed a very good dog.
Every 1’s a Winner
After the colorful ballad of “Rain,” “Every 1’s a Winner”s combo bass-and-guitar line blasts through the fog. Who knew the disco classic by Hot Chocolate could be so easily translated to fuzzed-out garage rock. Complete with a guest appearance by Fred Armisen on drums, Segall and company morph the song from a funky, freaky dancefloor number, into a psychedelic workout akin to an old-school Beck track. The sheer mass of these bass and guitar sounds makes your headphones feel like they weigh tons, but they’re cut with the delightfully silly, falsetto rendition of the vocals. It’s a love song you can bang your head to.
Despoiler of Cadaver
Continuing the theme, in a way, is “Despoiler of Cadaver,” the answer to the question “what if Mechanical Animals had a disco track?” Segall’s vocals pour on the sleaze and a slinky funk guitar pops over the foggy drum machines and Saturday Night-inspired bassline. I don’t think the song means anything, but what is the search for meaning in the face of all these bouncing rhythms and shaking hips?
My Lady’s on Fire
Ty Segall’s oft-professed love of Marc Bolan and T. Rex pours through on this trip through the stages of grief surrounding a particularly contentious breakup. It particularly calls to mind the trippy folk of Bolan’s early days when T. Rex was Tyrannosaurus Rex. Throughout, Segall’s acousitc guitar sounds almost otherworldly, before he closes the song with dueling electric guitar and saxophone (we’ll see that later) solos. As our pining for lost love fades, the two instruments meld into a prodigious jam session.
She
“She” is a harrowing, heavy ode to the early days of metal, with layer upon layer of distorted guitar. What the songs lacks in lyrical content (there’s just one verse repeated several times: “She / She / She said / I was a bad boy”) is made up by Segall’s delivery at full throat, calling to mind the best of the late-70’s British metal singers. By just the 90-second mark in this six-and-a-half minute song, we are into a chaotic improv session that constantly swerves between speed solos and stoner rock trances, during which a deranged keyboard mashes away, trying to conjure the ghost of Iron Butterfly.
The Main Pretender
More of Segall’s T. Rex love blasts through on “The Main Pretender,” this time thoroughly parked in The Slider’s glam rock influence, complete with hard bass line and easily listenable hook, despite the fuzz. We also hear the return of the saxophone, but whoever’s playing went and dropped a ton of acid. The solo is an unhinged, nearly atonal affair that would seem out of place except for its aggressive delivery (yes, you read that right, aggressive sax) easily fits with the angry vocals. This is probably, apart from “Fanny Dog” up there, Ty Segall’s clearest delivery, derisively chiding the subject as a manipulative actor in their relationship (whatever that relationship may be). “You got your body / You got your tears / You keep on saying that I owe you all my years,” Segall rants before getting right to the meat of it, “You're no one's baby / You're no one's lover / You're no one's brother / You're the main pretender.” This is the slinkiest, most danceable diss track ever made.
And, Goodnight
The (checks tracklist) TWELVE MINUTE closer is aptly named to say the least. This extended comedown pulls as much from Crazy Horse as previous songs did from T. Rex: the slow burn rhythm guitars doing their own thing, and distant-yet-eerily-close lead guitar playing an almost monotonous solo (very Neil Young), all over a textbook blues backing section of Wurlitzer, scale-riding bass, and jazz drums. The track almost threatens to steer into self-indulgent randomness when, seemingly out of nowhere, Segall begins to sing, breaking up the jam session. The song becomes a surreal meditation on death and estrangement, and its impeccable performance unleashes all the anger and sadness that accompanies them. After all the chaos and noise of the previous 63 minutes, there is no better way to end such a massive effort.
Ty Segall has many musical faces. Hell, just last year the man released an album of acoustic ballads about how much he loves his wife (who makes an appearance on this album, by the way, singing on “Meaning”). But if you thought the old ways were dead, Ty Segall is here to show you that not only are they very much alive, but they’ve been perfected.
Is this album a presceint statement on anything current? Not really. Does it’s runtime and track volume expound on some cohesive theme or narrative? Again, not really. Is it a loud, visceral, raw, raucous rock experiment guaranteed to give you your time’s worth in kick-ass tunes? You’re damn right.
