#2980 Ty Segall and White Fence - Joy

Ty's done it his way a half dozen different ways, and has nothing left to prove. Why not get back together with natural mate White Fence?

Joy isn't as thrillingly, disorientingly heavy as Hair - just two effortlessly talented dudes banging out a bunch of noise, the rock equivalent of The Weather, you can practically feel the couch under them, GBV-style, an album with pets on the cover and at least two songs about them. It's charmingly lazy, packed with fuzz and reedy, manic observations 4/5

#2923 Ty Segall - Freedom's Goblin

Freedom's Goblin's a sprawling, brilliant double album that takes Segall's dalliances with glam and squealing strangeness, marries them to his natural talents for hooksome fuzz, adds some killer rock horns, and blossoms into a bewildering opus.

After reaching the outer limits of what blasted guitar rock could accomplish, Ty Segall seemed lost. But last year's self-titled album was a centering ritual and the path opened up. Sweet 60's shimmer, Exile swagger, flashes of outright power pop (5 Ft Tall!) and more - none of the 19 songs sound the same. It harkens back to those adventurous albums from 90's bands trying to find space outside their sound: Tiny Music, Vitalogy, In It For the Money, Mellon Collie. Segall takes solo credit on this one, but there's a band on the cover and a band's worth of ideas on the record.

And then there's those sweet little callbacks. A hollowed-out third version of Talkin (may he keep making these forever) shows Segall hasn't lost his Diddy Wah Diddy. A 12 minute track closes things out, a pair of Cowgirl in the Sand guitars stretching Sleeper's title track into glitched out disintegration.

Ty's early stuff is legend, and he's finally showing us how much more he's capable of 4.5/5

#2722 OCS (Thee Oh Sees) - Memory of a Cut Off Head

Thee Oh Sees have a massacre of frustrating albums in their wake (especially Floating Coffin and Putrifiers II) that start strong and unravel into wistful meandering. After the relentless guitarmageddon of Orc, it's inevitable the pendulum would swing back: here's a whole record of wandering freak-folk psychedelia.

That sound's never been their strongest suit, but it at least works better as an albumlong commitment. Memory of a Cut Off Head's a baroque, morbid simmerer, riding slow waves of energy, swirling around a drain of bloody anxiety. It's unique, strange, interesting, occaisionally beautiful - but detached, and never especially enjoyable 3/5

#2173 Epsilons - Epsilons

Exactly the album you'd expect to find if you plotted the line backwards through Ty Segall's career.

His first real band's first real album, all frantic garagey punk, Segall yelping, guitars chugging, with that rolling 60's organ giving an extra retro spike. Every song's got its mission of self-destruction, throttling at you for a minute or two and out 3.5/5

#2126a Thee Oh Sees - A Weird Exits

Thee Oh Sees always had promise, some shredding genius always lurking in between their go-nowhere soundscapes. But motherfucker are they on the rise. Following their true-form arrival on Mutilator, they pile on with their heaviest, most solid record yet. It lack's Mutilators thrilling rush, but holy fuck that guitar // bass production is on another level, it is a thousand pound sword swung with precision and power, those riffs are _cut_, they hit you like a ton of damn bricks again and again. One of the great guitar records of the modern era that's doomed to go underappreciated 4.5/5

#2089 Goggs - Goggs

Never change, Ty.

There's no really innovation here. It's blistering, thundering guitars, shaped into the kind of 10-ton hooks that Ty Segall makes in his sleep, spiked with some real choice electronic noisefuckery, paced for effortless neverstopbobbingyourheadheartbeatsfasterfaster.

25 minutes of good, hard, overblown fun, and if I hadn't heard something so similar 10 times in the last 10 years from Segall and friends (see esp Fuzz, Meatbodies) it might be my album of the year. Still, I could listen to an infinite number of albums like this. Just might get my wish 4/5

#2017 Ty Segall - Emotional Mugger

Fitting this was first released on VHS tapes. It's ragged, cracky, a little behind, Segall still haunted by his T. Rex project. Guitar textures remain unbeatable, but riffwise the sound crawls and wallows and slinks, everything wearing masks of itself and lurching, uncanny and distorted, ignorant of pacing's good taste. It's possibly brilliant, melted and strange, not fun exactly, the drugs tipping over into scary, best appreciated in the details and tones - the actual songs and sound Cronenberged past empathy 3.5/5

#2015 Charlie and the Moonhearts / Teen Anger - Split EP

As a Mikal Cronin fan, I came for Charlie // Moonhearts, and they win the split.

6 tracks of surf-flecked punkrockabilly turned to 11. In the spirit Coachwhips via just-reviewed Epsilons, they rip and roar like a wave ride gone wrong, crashing into rocks, exploding with concussion starshow.

Goddamn the Cronin/Segall/Dwyer crew was doing some good shit in the 00's.
Teen Anger pitch in 5 more tracks and they're good, sleazy punk stompers, plus some breakneck plunges, but they're upstaged, sounding familiar by comparison. Still good fun - you'll get your 26 minutes-worth 4/5

#2014 Epsilons - Killed 'Em Deader 'N A Six Card Poker Hand

A frantic wave of unhinged boogie-woogie rockabilly gone punk, thrashing nonstop, band falling down the stairs with a manic grin.

Is it any surprise that Ty Segall's involved? He's in half the shit I review here.

Epsilons was one of his first bands, and it shows - there's a thrilling sloppiness, a total lack of stakes that he's rarely captured since, shades of fellow scenester Jon Dwyer's Coachwhips, in retrospect. It's dead simple, with less guitar fireworks (and 800% more organ drones) than his best stuff, but it's a blast, and a fun data point for connoisseurs of the segalsphere 4/5

#1944 Fuzz - II

The riffs are huge, and they rule. It's heavy and nasty: the fuzzed out bass juggernaut, the screaming guitar solos, the neckbreak dives into overpowering guitar noise maelstroms. But I feel like I don't like it as much as I should, somehow. Have we finally reached saturation on the Ty Segall sound?

There's something overstuffed and plodding about this, even as it's great, even as it's hooky, it's just so much, so loud, for 67 minutes - it's numbing. It makes me appreciate the great Ty Segal albums, which managed to give you room to breathe, in the mix and in the sequencing.

Possibly the perfect Segallsphere album to go to if you want pure dedication to riffage, but not my first choice overall 4/5

#1533 Fuzz - Live in San Francisco

The super heavy, super buzzy guitar crunch you'd expect from this Segallsphere side project. Unlike the OBN III's entry in the Live in SF series though, there's no real banter, no real live feel, just BZZZZZHHHH FFFZZZZZHHHHH BZZHH BZZHHH!

Production's hot, shit is super super fuzzy. Band earns that name. This shit just sounds loud as hell. Nothing here that will knock you out of your seat, but it might make you sink about 300 feet down into it for 20 minutes or so 3.5/5

#1469 Wand - Ganglion Reef

MORE TY SEGALL COLLABS.

Tremendous fuzz, interstellar solos, moments of riffage and fragile grace, wrapped up in waifish, reverbey vocals that give the whole thing a slimy translucent pink sheen. It's slippery stuff, hooks buried under squish - I liked it, wanted to love it, but it just kept slipping out of my grasp 4/5

#1451 Mikal Cronin - MC2

Further dispatches from the Segallspehere! This time from longtime collaborator, one time Reverse Shark Attacker, Mikal Cronin himself.

Ah!

But holyshit how far has Mikal come, how much of his own voice does he have. This is as good a pure power pop record as you'll hear all decade, with a Weezerready summer shitkicker sensibility that will make your calf lurch and set your face a'grinnin'. Alongside, whynot, a magical sense of musicianship, spraying down the everpresent towers of acoustic shimmer with those crystaline solos, those crinkling piano lines, the occasional castrophony of overblown strings, all in the service of those feelings too big to live.

And then there's this heart, these songs that will make you think of good times and say out loud "god that makes me sad". It's packed with this impossibly sincere vulnerability that was only hinted at on his debut, moving on from grasping existentialism to something sunnier but still shimmering and shuddering.

"Should I shout it out?" // "Am I wrong?" Cronin asks on back-to-back tracks. Have you ever heard so many first person questions in an album that didn't come across as totally bullshit? And the full line is actually "Am I wrong? . . . [halfagain uncertain beat] . . . I don't think so" delivered with all the confidence of not thinking so and all the wavering of not knowing for sure, your own face in an autumn puddle.

And it all packs together, all that skyrocketing, all that wondering at the world from above, all that drifting to earth slowly and too soon, in a perfectly paced, sprawling, straightthroughlisten once kind of album that we get so few of.

Brilliant, classic stuff that will outlast the ages as a cult classic if there's any justice in the world

5/5

#1450 Meatbodies - Meatbodies

Fuck yes. All good music is 1 degree from Ty Segall, this from Chad Ubovich, his former bass player (with Ty himself returning the favor on drums). Long live the Segallsphere!

This is pure riffage for the fun of it, trippy and heavy and dense as the fist of god, that signature Hawkwind stripped to the bone sound, but a lot more fun -- there's that freshness of a guy with everything to prove and nothing to lose and its an exhilarating ride.

As Chad says right before kicking into the bassline of the year //and it feels like fucking gold//

4.5/5

#1371 Ty Segall - Manipulator

A lush, hypnotic, timeless album, this is pure glam rock into chugging proto-metal. Every song finds its core riff and spins it in place while swooning sentiment and a clatter of inventive guitar solos hold court. There's palpable glitter and shine with real rock energy, a cascade through a history of Queen, T-Rex, and the Stooges at their slinkiest. Brilliant is the word.

The variety, the 17-song generosity, the whole-album flow - I can't be help but be reminded of all time personal favorite Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

It's a departure from Segall's pure shitkicking garage energy, and it truly catches fire only occasionally, but it's a glorious triumph in its own way. Dude's a fucking genius, this is a serious contender for my album of the year 4.5/5

#1234 Thee Oh Sees - Drop

It's an Oh Sees album alright - that endless chug, the looping, loping bass, those squalls of guitar noise, those cooing falsettos, now with more little touches of organ and horn, now with less of the meandering nothing experiments. This is distilled Thee Oh Sees, getting that muscular Krautey, Velvetey-via-Liarsey sweet rotting flesh noisome stomp good and toned for Summer, its their most consistent album yet: their first that's completely listenable front to back, with nothing as thrilling as The Dream or I Come From the Mountain (though Penetrating Eye's growing on me). That consistency will probably get this more plays on my player than many of their better albums, but I still find myself wishing there was a little more excitement to be found 3.5/5

#1074 Ty Segall - Sleeper

Modern guitar god Ty Segall goes acoustic! Are his songwriting chops up to the task of justifying an album's worth of songs, absent the massive force multiplier that his garage armageddon guitar sound brings? Eh. The lyrics still twist about, simplicity lightly barbed, all about the general and the universal and life and love in abstraction. And the riffs are kind of there, with that start-stop immediacy. But its telling that the album's second best moment is the throttling one-chord electric beating that leads into the climax of The Man Man. Without that guitar energy, Segall's reedy voice and good-not-great songwriting just don't have any punch to them and they fail to get the blood pumping.

One exception: the best moment on the album is its entire last song, a gorgeous, chord-perfect, treasure of acoustic guitar longing. Stuff a bit more of that on the next one and you might be onto something - in the meantime, don't quit your day/night/where-do-you-find-the-time-to-be-this-fucking-prolific job 3/5

#1063 Fuzz - Fuzz

Ty Segall finds a way to put out more records than anyone, and his work with this band doesn't fall far from the tree. The sound is richer, the brattiness dialed down, and the songs focused on big, thick, buzzy acid rock riffage, but underneath there's that signature Segall sense of melody, unpredictability, and plain old rock power. Guitars are the focus, but don't miss that rollicking bass that gives the best riffs a killer one-two punch. A powerfully listenable, occasionally thrilling album for any lover of Black Dog-style pure riffs 4.5/5

#1048 Thee Oh Sees - Help

One of the limp Oh Sees releases, too much tuneless crooning, meandering chugging, art rock grasping somehow combined with lazy songwriting. The guitar tones are solid and fuzzy and nuzzly and ragged as ever, but there's little of the drive and melody and rage that marks their best stuff 2.5/5

#982 Ty Segall - Singles 07-10

Segall's unstoppable. A sprawling garagey 25 song rampage, spewing formless rage and energy, slashing raw power in every conceivable direction. This is dude at his best, blasting outward with abandon, with none of the sludginess that muddled Melted and Goodbye Bread, just pure buzzsaw killstreak guitars and overblown vocal eruptions.

There's a band back there somewhere, but Segall's smash and grab vision is so singular that it seems transfigured spontaneously by his formidable will 4.5/5