Ty Segall’s one-man aesthetic gets some satisfying adornments on Possession
By NICK TAVARES
STATIC and FEEDBACK Editor
On one of my several repeat runs through Ty Segall’s latest record, I got stuck on “Shining,” becoming slowly entranced as the drums rolled through those riffs, breaking down as the verses end before the chorus and eventually building up to a killer fuzz-drenched guitar solo before the fade out.
While I was listening, I was imagining his entire band in their rehearsal space, locking in and just kicking the hell out of the jams while this thing builds and builds before it finally explodes in those last bursts of twin guitar madness. And that’s when I remembered that, save for some flourishes elsewhere on the record, this was Segall on his own again.
Obviously, the guy knows how to have fun. And it translates for 40 minutes and again ad infinitum as, inevitably, the album reaches the end and turns around uninterrupted to the beginning. Because I wasn’t about to turn it off.
After a detour with his drum/percussion album Love Rudiments, Segall is back pretty quickly with Possession, and it’s another record that can make a listener sit in awe at how he’s able to just turn out another 10-track instant classic so close on the heels of the last one.
Following a low-key start with “Shoplifter,” a character sketch of a woman living on the edge of our imposed financial reality who’s become quite adept at cleaning out the shelves as needed, he picks up the pace on “Possession,” dialing up the groove while keeping with the central themes that the opening track, looking up and subsequently down on those in charge and the tactile, short-term gains of materialism and power.
Through the messages and the shifts in rhythm and volume, though, is the sense of adventure and satisfaction that comes through in making the music. Distortion returns to kick off “Skirts of Heaven” before being met with another chorus of horns. Keyboards provide the most dominant textures on “Fantastic Tomb” before descending back into fuzz guitar riffs. Again, it’s an evolution from otherwise typical psychedelic sounds into more textured soundscapes, with “Buildings” taking on almost jazzy overtones while Segall sings about being ready to jump in the car and escape whenever necessary.
All the while, I’m imagining Segall plugging away, laying down all the drums and bass and guitars, getting the songs in shape, before turning them loose on all the extras (arranged here by longtime collaborator Mikal Cronin. This album could’ve been simply an excellent singer-songwriter effort (though it was already much more interesting than your typical guitar/voice affair). Instead, hoards of brass and bows invade the record, from the opener all the way through the near-mission statement “Another California Song.”
With immediate apologies for doing the rote rock critic thing of comparing one album to the one that (almost) preceded it, it’s easy now to look at Three Bells as a determined, personal effort, with Possession as a looser, off-the-cuff affair, albeit arranged as it is. Again, Segall does practically everything, save for the strings and horns. He wasn’t just cutting loose with a band. But he did get to structure this all as if he was just ripping all these tunes out in his garage.
And that’s the fun here. Segall is multi-talented and has long been an artist where, whatever he does, it’s at the very least engaging. Most of his work goes well beyond that, of course, but there’s something to be said for just listening to him cut loose and have fun. This is an album that could’ve be left on repeat for an entire summer party. It also might’ve killed on either AM or FM radio back in the day. The riffs are nasty, the horns add punch and his distinct vocals give this all a personality that no one else could bring to the piece.
E-mail Nick Tavares at nick@staticandfeedback.com