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Rating: Surfing through the DeArchivio, you discover that Ty Segall, this kid now in his thirties, is known but not explored as he should be. It's true, he's done too many things and it's not easy to keep up with him, he has a thousand projects together, changes formation every now and then, and perhaps has too many different influences today to define him. So: I bring you back to the origins of the matter.
Ty Segall is born a fool, no one will ever take this label from him. Foolish, raw, messy, dirty, and even incapable. And he's lucky to be Californian and able to draw from a not-so-bad tradition; moreover, there's real excitement over there these years, the punk/garage/fuzz scene is a point of reference, a new "Californication," a garage-punk Californization. His first self-titled LP, not to be confused with the other self-titled, Ty Segall (2017), is a sonic dump blasted at an insane volume. A real mess: first of all, he plays alone and uses a drum machine, to say he plays is an overstatement, he uses a few chords and tricks, but what comes out is a distorted grater. But also because his debut goal was precisely this, to grate the face of anyone who listened! And that's why Ty should never be mistaken for an artist who explores genres and has a musical creed of some unknown DeRango. He basks in the punk spirit, silliness, and fooling around, all that you hear after: the nods to funk, blues, old-school rock, it's all for calculated fooling. If you check out "Ty Rex," his tribute to Marc Bolan, you can understand his reinterpretation of Glam Rock, and there you are tuned into Ty's world. When he performs live and sings his "sentimental" songs, if he looks at his buddies by mistake, he bursts into laughter because he doesn’t really believe in it, he's just pulling our leg. For me, it was love at first sight.
The album consists of 12 songs, all very similar. If listened to at maximum volume, they create a "stoner" effect that not even a bottle of Tequila can replicate; the lyrics are seriously banal, he's serious and seriously says a lot of nonsense. The voice is terribly distorted. Basically, I'm describing a mess... But no!!!! His genius is right here, with all the roughness he commits to showing he creates a masterpiece. The cacophony is merely a tool for a huge adrenaline rush, he screams, thrashes, unleashes limitless energy upon us; listening to him makes you want to vent years of repressed anger and break everything. The little riffs are simple but ultra-engaging, the drums beat all the same, and half an hour after the album ends, you find yourself still nodding up and down in front of the mirror. Let's be clear, after a while all this racket is unbearable, you listen to it a few times then give it the right dimension. But it's the concept that must pass and remain: here there's lava-like material ready to destroy all the messes you hear today! I'm real: you're not! And I'll prove it to you (so far, he's doing just that) even without Spotify (what you find was forced on there) and the crappy social media: only with my lousy music!
Mandatory listens are "Go Home," "The Drag," "Pretty Baby (You're So Ugly)," "Oh Mary" (a train to the face), "Don't Do It," which in the riff-break reminds me of "Lady Sniff" by Surfists Del Buco Del Culo in terms of imagination; and then there's the Ramones cover "You Should Never Have Opened That Door," which rightly points back to the golden-boy Californian's reference world. I hope I was clear: enjoy listening without seriousness, Ty Segall doesn't want seriousness, he wants his music to evoke the punk in all of us! And despite all this, I'm ready to bet that within a decade he'll truly be one of the sacred monsters of this first part of the century. It may be an ill-advised statement but I take all the responsibility for it. His subsequent evolution speaks clearly: he's heading straight for the top of the world.
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