Ty Segall – Bandwidth

KEXP Presents: Ty Segall

Jim Beckmann — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 15:43:10 +0000

Could there be a better symbol of KEXP’s rebirth in our new home than the “Baby Big Man” that is Ty Segall? Donning a creepy torn-up baby mask and wielding an adult-sized umbilical chord, the station favorite christened a new performance space with its first-ever live broadcast session.

To capture the songs from his latest album, Emotional Mugger, Segall was joined by The Muggers, a who’s-who of today’s psych and garage rockers, including Kyle Thomas of King Tuff, Mikal Cronin, Wand’s Cory Hanson and Evan Burrows, and Emmet Kelly of The Cairo Gang. Raw and raucous, the set spilled over with zany passion, as Segall dribbled, drooled, squealed, bawled and threw lyrical tantrums over blistering guitars, squelching keys and pummeling rhythms. Big baby, bad baby, weird baby — if Ty Segall is the first baby born at KEXP’s new studio, we can only marvel at the generations to come.

SET LIST

“Emotional Mugger/Leopard Priestess”

Watch Ty Segall’s full performance on KEXP’s YouTube channel.

Review: Ty Segall, ‘Emotional Mugger’

Doug Mosurock — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 23:00:00 +0000

Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released.

Barreling on after a non-stop flurry of activity over the past eight years, Ty Segall is dropping his 10th solo album in the dead of winter, its cover depicting a Xeroxed baby head as it peers out of the fold amid a field of toner-black gradients. Staring into that disquieting image is adequate preparation for Emotional Mugger, which feels as fractured and delirious as anything he’s recorded.

Segall’s last solo album, Manipulator, showcased both polish and conceptual harmony that seemed inevitable, given the directions the garage-rock wunderkind was heading. But it would appear now that Segall wants to run screaming in the opposite direction, crawl directly into listener’s minds and do some rewiring. The pop hooks, fuzz guitar and Anglicized vocals fans expect are all here, but Segall seems indifferent to his own playbook, throwing in corkscrews of weirdness like elbows to the head whenever he feels like it.

“Squealer” changes fidelity midstream, while synthesized counter-melodies draw tracers around the lopsided title track, all to a mid-tempo thump that corrals the brightness of Segall’s earlier works into a medicated snarl. Recalling the heavier work of his band Fuzz, “Diversion” pairs its catchiness with force engineered to blow your hair back; Segall turns an unusually sweet corner with the aptly titled “Candy Sam,” even employing a small children’s choir to sing the chorus. If you’ve ever wondered how Segall might channel the early, risk-taking triumphs of Beck, much of the evidence is right here.

Throughout this reinvention, many signposts of compatriots’ work surface. The whole of Emotional Mugger seems closer to the paisley abandon of White Fence — and the bizarre, druggy pulse of Segall’s proteges in WAND — than even his own fractured earlier works might indicate. But Emotional Mugger exists more as a head trip than any stab at continuity and making friends. It’s a wild, twisted ride into and out of Segall’s psyche — the sound of a restless mind attempting to turn itself inside out.

First Listen: Fuzz, ‘II’

Doug Mosurock — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 23:03:45 +0000

If you didn’t know that Ty Segall had spent a good chunk of 2015 on tour, you might think the prolific Bay Area garage-glam wunderkind had gone into hiding. Apart from a solo EP earlier this year, Segall’s efforts this year have mostly been behind the boards, as he’s produced records for Peacers and Birth Defects. With a new Fuzz album, though, Segall is back in the spotlight, playing drums with his power trio of guitarist Charlie Moothart (Moonhearts) and bassist Chad Ubovich (Meatbodies). This time around, he heaves forth an impressive 14-song double album made for headbanging and the cultivation of bad vibes, as if all the warmth and goodwill of last year’s Manipulator had turned to ash.

Once again, Segall and his cohorts are ushered out of the garage; this is music meant to be played at a volume walls can’t contain. Fuzz’s namesake is no joke, either — this is proto-metal, anvil-head blues-rock, thick like cement about to harden. II vacillates between blunt-force heaviness and a slightly trippier variant, but the pall of doom is cast all over it, making it Segall’s darkest record in a good long time. He’s got an athletic presence on the drums, with a pingy snare sound that captures how hard he hits, but his faux-Brit glam vocals can’t mask the darkness as he brings to mind a young Ozzy Osbourne. “Bringer Of Light” and “Pipe” sound like they should be reverberating across a Hammer horror castle in the chill of late November, as Moothart and Ubovich flex their instrumental muscle, sounding for all the world like a diesel freighter downshifting.

Still, Fuzz recognizes the powers of restraint. Follow the 14-minute title track to its core, and instead of meandering off into drum solos and other diversions, the three simply opt to get low. The riffs are still there, of course, but this time they’re engineered to pull you into the shadows.

Ty Segall Rocks Out — Acoustic-Style, And With More Polish

NPR Staff — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:40:51 +0000

If there’s a Mozart of garage rock, it’s Ty Segall. He’s put out at least a dozen albums of face-melting, critic-adored low-fi rock, in the style of bands like The Troggs or The Stooges — not to mention his work with other bands and in other styles.

But his newest album, Manipulator, is different: more produced and polished. Segall came to NPR West to talk about the album with NPR’s Arun Rath — and play a few songs for us.

Hear the conversation at the audio link.