So what do you do after the year of three original albums...one full band, one more or less just you, one with Tim Presley of White Fence? All supported with relentless touring, and those ridiculous press interviews.
Get some zzzzzs apparently. And also make a teaser for the upcoming Sleeper which sounds, on a very limited sample, to be trippier and more psychedelic than recent efforts and very, very fine.
Maybe he'll get something to eat after this. A salad perhaps.
Showing posts with label Ty Segall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ty Segall. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Mikal Cronin' MCII
This new album from Mikal Cronin (who is Ty Segall's bass player and songwriting partner) is awesome, way more power pop than Ty's stuff...reminds me of Brendan Benson and Jason Falkner (who I love, so there). I asked somebody if I could review it, either Dusted or Blurt, but nobody's getting back to me, so it looks like I might get to listen without thinking too hard about it.
Want to hear the single? Sure you do.
The album's out on Merge on May 7th.
Want to hear the single? Sure you do.
The album's out on Merge on May 7th.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Pink Floyd...what's not to love?
In the Red is reissuing Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin's 2009 vinyl-only Reverse Shark Attack in late January...and it's a hella good time, highly recommended if you didn't catch it the first time. (Cronin is a mainstay in Segall's band now and kind of a co-writer on the really excellent Slaughterhouse.) The originals are terrific, but they really got my attention with this cover, from one of my all time favorite albums, the Syd-enhanced, acid-wreathed Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Sorry I've been off and on with the posts. I've been having some motivational problems, plus this college/financial aid application process is kind of all-encompassing. Be glad when it's over.
Aren't you happy we didn't all
go
right
off
the
cliff
?
!!!!
Sorry I've been off and on with the posts. I've been having some motivational problems, plus this college/financial aid application process is kind of all-encompassing. Be glad when it's over.
Aren't you happy we didn't all
go
right
off
the
cliff
?
!!!!
Friday, December 28, 2012
Also, another list ....
For those of you who aren't burnt out on lists by now, Blurt has just posted its top 75 records which, as usual, leans heavily on real people playing real instruments (not entirely, but it's a bias -- and one that I probably share). Anyway, Ty Segall made the top 5, and in honor of that, Fred pulled out my Ty interview from the fall.
Read the list here.
And if you haven't already, my piece on Ty Segall.
Read the list here.
And if you haven't already, my piece on Ty Segall.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Ty Segall Day
So who has loved Ty Segall longer and more publicly than me?
Not Dave Letterman, who just caught on this week. (But cool that he did.)
My Ty reviews so far;
Dusted -- Ty Segall, Ty Segall
Dusted -- Ty Segall and White Fence, Wet Hair
Dusted -- Ty Segall, Melted
Blurt -- Ty Segall Slaughterhouse
Blurt -- Ty Segall, Lemons
An interview I wrote for the Quietus, but they never ran it, so I posted it on my blog.
A Twins-related interview for Blurt.
If you haven't already, listen to Ty and go vote.
Not Dave Letterman, who just caught on this week. (But cool that he did.)
My Ty reviews so far;
Dusted -- Ty Segall, Ty Segall
Dusted -- Ty Segall and White Fence, Wet Hair
Dusted -- Ty Segall, Melted
Blurt -- Ty Segall Slaughterhouse
Blurt -- Ty Segall, Lemons
An interview I wrote for the Quietus, but they never ran it, so I posted it on my blog.
A Twins-related interview for Blurt.
If you haven't already, listen to Ty and go vote.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
It's Wednesday so there's new Ty Segall
I've been keeping a lid on this new Ty Segall record, Twins, because the publicist said it was super, super secret, even the names of the songs are on a need-to-know basis...but today, Drag City is letting loose with the first single, so from me to you, another good one from the incredibly productive Mr. Segall, his third full-length of 2012.
Here's "The Hill"
Here's "The Hill"
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Ty Segall's Slaughterhouse
The very prolific Ty Segall has a new album called Slaughterhouse out now on In the Red, the first with his full touring band and a much harder rocking, more aggressive thing than Goodbye Bread or his split with White Fence...which is I think still my favorite Ty for this year, but hold on, he may release 3-4 more before the end.
Anyway, I reviewed the album for Blurt's spring issue, and it's up on the website now:
Ty Segall Band
Slaughterhouse
(In the Red)
With Slaughterhouse (In The Red), Ty Segall returns to the detuned blare of his first, self-titled album and early singles. The main difference? Segall has the support of a full band - Mikal Cronin, Charlie Moothart and Emily Rose Epstein - as he pushes things towards 11.
More (but not much more)
Anyway, I reviewed the album for Blurt's spring issue, and it's up on the website now:
Ty Segall Band
Slaughterhouse
(In the Red)
With Slaughterhouse (In The Red), Ty Segall returns to the detuned blare of his first, self-titled album and early singles. The main difference? Segall has the support of a full band - Mikal Cronin, Charlie Moothart and Emily Rose Epstein - as he pushes things towards 11.
More (but not much more)
Friday, June 1, 2012
Flowers in their hair...
Great little comp from Secret Seven, compiling the brightest lights of SF's psychedelic garage pop scene...Vetiver, Grass Widow's Hannah Lew, Chuck Prophet, Kelley Stoltz, Fresh & Onlys' Tim Cohen and Wymond Miles, Ty Seagall, the Papercuts and Paula Frazier. You can stream the whole damn thing here:
Monday, April 23, 2012
Reconsidering that Reese's Peanut Butter Cup phenomenon
I really like both White Fence and Ty Segall, but was a bit less enamored of their collaboration. My review ran today at Dusted:
Ty Segall and White Fence
Hair
Drag City
Ty Segall and Tim Presley’s White Fence work slightly different parts of the 1960s psych-pop spectrum. Segall is, in general, louder, more distorted, more rhythmic, allowing punk urgency to occasionally push through lackadaisical tambourine-laced jams, injecting rockabilly jitters into slacker guitar-strummed grooves. Presley hews a little more closely to Eastern-tinged psych traditions, invoking George Harrison in the way his bending, half-stepping guitar riffs turn sitar-ish and surrounding liminal melodies with clouds of haze and drone.
Still, Segall and Presley have a lot in common, not just membership in a certain lo-fi, California-centered garage pop club, but in the way they get at the music. Both work quickly and without much second guessing, cloaking bright, loosely structured nuggets of psychedelia in the fuzz and rush of garage rock. Both communicate with immediacy, rather than polish, leaving loose ends hanging and rough undersides showing. And both have a knack of hiding sticky hooks in the mush and drone, so that you come away from their albums with actual songs in your head, not a vague sensation of having heard music.
More
Ty Segall and White Fence
Hair
Drag City
Ty Segall and Tim Presley’s White Fence work slightly different parts of the 1960s psych-pop spectrum. Segall is, in general, louder, more distorted, more rhythmic, allowing punk urgency to occasionally push through lackadaisical tambourine-laced jams, injecting rockabilly jitters into slacker guitar-strummed grooves. Presley hews a little more closely to Eastern-tinged psych traditions, invoking George Harrison in the way his bending, half-stepping guitar riffs turn sitar-ish and surrounding liminal melodies with clouds of haze and drone.
Still, Segall and Presley have a lot in common, not just membership in a certain lo-fi, California-centered garage pop club, but in the way they get at the music. Both work quickly and without much second guessing, cloaking bright, loosely structured nuggets of psychedelia in the fuzz and rush of garage rock. Both communicate with immediacy, rather than polish, leaving loose ends hanging and rough undersides showing. And both have a knack of hiding sticky hooks in the mush and drone, so that you come away from their albums with actual songs in your head, not a vague sensation of having heard music.
More
Sunday, October 23, 2011
My lost Ty Segall story
So, I wrote this for the Quietus, and they must not have liked it, because it never ran. I thought I'd share it with the 5-10 people who read my blog anyway.
Ty Segall: All Alone No More
SF’s one-man punk phenomenon Ty Segall has grown up quickly, collaborating with most of the Bay Area’s psych garage mainstays and churning out a series of increasingly melodic, psychedelic albums, but these days Segall says he can feel the aggression coming back.
“You can literally hit a drum and sing and it’s a great song,” say Ty Segall, the Bay Area garage rocker who has evolved, in less than five years, from a frenetic one-man punk band to one of his generation’s best psychedelic songwriters . His latest album, Goodbye Bread, swirls blues-based 1960s-influenced romps with Beatle-esque multi-colours, slows things down and ponders looming questions like whether or not to purchase a couch. It’s a far cry from the fuzzy mania of early records like “Horn the Unicorn” or the ramped-up, amped up raves of the 2008 self-titled LP, but Segall shrugs off the differences. “I don’t think there are any rules about what makes a good song good.”
Segall, raised blocks from the shore in Orange County, first found punk rock through skate-boarding videos, latching on, as an early teenager, to Minor Threat and Bad Brain, the Dead Kennedys and the Misfits. He knew right away, he says, that he was going to be more than a bystander. “The thing about punk rock is that anybody can do it,” he observes. “It’s kind of understood that from the beginning, you just have to want to do it.”
Segall formed Epsilons while still in high school, playing guitar and singing in a band that released three full-lengths before he packed off to college in San Francisco. There he hooked up with the Traditional Fools, whose lo-fi and primitive take on Nuggets-era rock caught the attention of Eric Butterworth at Make a Mess records. Butterworth, who is also in Nodzzz, asked Segall if the Traditional Fools could play a show in San Francisco sometime in 2007, and Segall agreed. Then he forgot to tell his bandmates about it, they couldn’t make the show at the last minute, and, just like that, a solo career was launched.
“Instead of cancelling it, I asked if I could just come and play. I had some songs I was working on – the songs that ended up on the first record -- so I was just going to show up and play the guitar,” says Segall. “Then I got there, and I saw a kick drum and a high hat, and I said, ‘Man, can I borrow a kick drum and a high hat and try to make some noise with my feet?’ I had never done that before. “
The show went well enough that Segall began performing by himself, one foot on the bass drum, one on the high hat, a guitar cradled in his lap and a tambourine within swatting distance. His high-energy stage show won some key fans. In a spring 2008 Listed feature at the online magazine Dusted, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees included Ty Segall and The Traditional Fools in his ten favorite bands of the moment, saying “Ty has started doing a one-man band thing that is ridiculously killer.”
Mike Donovan of Sic Alps remembers an Oh Sees, Sic Alps, Ty Segall tour through the south in the fall of 2008, where, he says, Segall impressed him as “supremely talented and a great singer.” Afterwards, Sic Alps invited Segall to join the band, and he and Donovan played a series of East Coast shows with Eric Bauer shortly after. (Donovan also penned Segall’s Goodbye Bread bio, as a joke signing it Andrew Loog Oldham.)
Dwyer’s Castleface Records released Segall’s self-titled album, the record that documented Segall’s one-man band phase, late in 2008. “I recorded that first record live in a buddy’s basement,” says Segall, adding that, as at the live shows, he played all the instruments and sang, sometimes all at the same time.
“After we did that, I was like, ‘Cool, that sounds good, but I don’t really know if I want to do another one-man band record, ‘ “ he adds, “That’s the one man band record. It’s pretty unique.”
Segall was also just plain worn out from his madly-energized live show. “It’s definitely tiring,” he says. “If I haven’t done it for a while, I have to take a week or two to get back into it. It’s really hard for me to just jump back into it. And my legs…it’s just kind of a full-on feeling. You have to get back into it.”
He adds, “It’s fun now, when I haven’t done it for a long time, but I was doing it for two years straight. I realized it was just too much pressure. If stuff gets screwed up, it can go downhill. It really sucks because everything is you.”
So, with his first album finished and his body aching from night after night of constant thrashing, Segall began to think about forming a band. He went first to his college friend, Emily Epstein, a drummer. “I had to convince her to play with me, because she hadn’t played drums in a band for a long time,” he says. “I was like ‘dude, come on, please, please!’ and it took a month or two of trying to convince her to play. I think she was just shy or something.”
He also began working with a succession of bass players, Shayde Sartin of the Fresh & Onlys, then Mikal Cronin (with whom he later recorded Reverse Shark Attack in 2009), then Tim Hellman, then a girlfriend named Renee and then back to Cronin.
With a full band in place, Segall was able to push his songwriting in different directions, evolving towards a slower, more melodic, trippier sound in Lemons , Melted and, finally, Goodbye Bread, his first on Drag City. “I guess I’m just trying to make things sound a little different than they have in the past,” says Segall, struggling to articulate a process that is, clearly, at least for him, mostly intuitive. “It’s just experimenting with how to write a song, with tunes or whatever…I’m just trying to get better. I don’t know how to explain how I’m doing it.”
One thing that has changed is Segall’s mix of influences, which has broadened considerably since his skate-punking days. “For sure, back when I did that first record, I was mostly into garage rock. But now lately I’m into glam and pop and softer music and weirder music, like noise music and really crazy psych music and krautrock and stuff like that. Definitely I think that me being interested in types of music than in the past probably has gone into my songs. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it.”
As a result, like Melted, Goodbye Bread has a definite downtempo vibe, its sounds winding hazily through folky guitar cadences, Segall’s voice slowed to a codeine-sticky crawl. If the self-title edged evoked the Ramones and Dexter Romweber, Goodbye Bread sounds like late Beatles psych, though a bit unstrung and more casually delivered. Segall acknowledges the change in pace, but says he might be almost done with this particular phase. “I did kind of mellow out for a while, but the aggression is coming back,” he comments. “What I want to do is to make music like Goodbye Bread but with more aggression. I want to do that for the next record.”
Meanwhile, Segall is living the life of a working musician, spending 40% or more of his time on the road and re-acclimating grudgingly, in his rare time off, to mundane tasks like paying rent or buying groceries. You can hear some of his reservations – about the 9 to 5 and, conversely, about its more bohemian alternative – in Goodbye Bread. In “Comfortable Home,” for instance, he struggles to understand why a girlfriend wants to buy a couch. “I Am With You,” later on, lists a litany of things that Segall has had enough of: trumpets, kids, hats, dresses, the man and home or, as he puts it, “the place with the fuckin’ fog.” The dog on the cover of Goodbye Bread is not Segall’s dog. There’s no way he could have a pet given the way he lives right now.
Both on the record and over the phone, Segall sounds like a man who hasn’t wholly decided whether a regular life is preferable to touring, or vice versa. “That’s definitely part of the record, “ he says, when asked about the tension between home and the road. “but it’s not just about wanting that [settled] lifestyle because part of me doesn’t want that. There are things that I miss having but there are also things that I’m thankful for being able to do.”
For instance, when we speak, Segall is just back from Australia, where he played shows with Melbourne’s UV Race, hung with Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Mikey Young and absorbed a scene that is very much like the one that surrounds him at home. “It’s maybe the combination of the surfing, having the ocean near by, and the music scene,” he says. Punk rock, obviously, doesn’t require sun and surf, Segall says, and some of its greatest bands have come out of snowy, landlocked cities like Cleveland and Detroit. Still, there’s something about the combination of garage-rock energy and sunniness that sets San Francisco’s current scene apart from the others.
“It’s hard to say whether there’s a San Francisco sound,” says Segall. “There’s a psychedelic element and a pop element that everybody shares – well, not everybody, but bands like Thee Ohsees, Sic Alps and Kelley Stoltz.”
“I’m definitely influenced by my friends,” he adds. “It’s not like I pick up something from John Dwyer, or learn something. It’s more like I say, ‘Oh shit, this new Oh Sees album is amazing. Damn, I’ve got to make a good record, too.’”
Ty Segall: All Alone No More
SF’s one-man punk phenomenon Ty Segall has grown up quickly, collaborating with most of the Bay Area’s psych garage mainstays and churning out a series of increasingly melodic, psychedelic albums, but these days Segall says he can feel the aggression coming back.
“You can literally hit a drum and sing and it’s a great song,” say Ty Segall, the Bay Area garage rocker who has evolved, in less than five years, from a frenetic one-man punk band to one of his generation’s best psychedelic songwriters . His latest album, Goodbye Bread, swirls blues-based 1960s-influenced romps with Beatle-esque multi-colours, slows things down and ponders looming questions like whether or not to purchase a couch. It’s a far cry from the fuzzy mania of early records like “Horn the Unicorn” or the ramped-up, amped up raves of the 2008 self-titled LP, but Segall shrugs off the differences. “I don’t think there are any rules about what makes a good song good.”
Segall, raised blocks from the shore in Orange County, first found punk rock through skate-boarding videos, latching on, as an early teenager, to Minor Threat and Bad Brain, the Dead Kennedys and the Misfits. He knew right away, he says, that he was going to be more than a bystander. “The thing about punk rock is that anybody can do it,” he observes. “It’s kind of understood that from the beginning, you just have to want to do it.”
Segall formed Epsilons while still in high school, playing guitar and singing in a band that released three full-lengths before he packed off to college in San Francisco. There he hooked up with the Traditional Fools, whose lo-fi and primitive take on Nuggets-era rock caught the attention of Eric Butterworth at Make a Mess records. Butterworth, who is also in Nodzzz, asked Segall if the Traditional Fools could play a show in San Francisco sometime in 2007, and Segall agreed. Then he forgot to tell his bandmates about it, they couldn’t make the show at the last minute, and, just like that, a solo career was launched.
“Instead of cancelling it, I asked if I could just come and play. I had some songs I was working on – the songs that ended up on the first record -- so I was just going to show up and play the guitar,” says Segall. “Then I got there, and I saw a kick drum and a high hat, and I said, ‘Man, can I borrow a kick drum and a high hat and try to make some noise with my feet?’ I had never done that before. “
The show went well enough that Segall began performing by himself, one foot on the bass drum, one on the high hat, a guitar cradled in his lap and a tambourine within swatting distance. His high-energy stage show won some key fans. In a spring 2008 Listed feature at the online magazine Dusted, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees included Ty Segall and The Traditional Fools in his ten favorite bands of the moment, saying “Ty has started doing a one-man band thing that is ridiculously killer.”
Mike Donovan of Sic Alps remembers an Oh Sees, Sic Alps, Ty Segall tour through the south in the fall of 2008, where, he says, Segall impressed him as “supremely talented and a great singer.” Afterwards, Sic Alps invited Segall to join the band, and he and Donovan played a series of East Coast shows with Eric Bauer shortly after. (Donovan also penned Segall’s Goodbye Bread bio, as a joke signing it Andrew Loog Oldham.)
Dwyer’s Castleface Records released Segall’s self-titled album, the record that documented Segall’s one-man band phase, late in 2008. “I recorded that first record live in a buddy’s basement,” says Segall, adding that, as at the live shows, he played all the instruments and sang, sometimes all at the same time.
“After we did that, I was like, ‘Cool, that sounds good, but I don’t really know if I want to do another one-man band record, ‘ “ he adds, “That’s the one man band record. It’s pretty unique.”
Segall was also just plain worn out from his madly-energized live show. “It’s definitely tiring,” he says. “If I haven’t done it for a while, I have to take a week or two to get back into it. It’s really hard for me to just jump back into it. And my legs…it’s just kind of a full-on feeling. You have to get back into it.”
He adds, “It’s fun now, when I haven’t done it for a long time, but I was doing it for two years straight. I realized it was just too much pressure. If stuff gets screwed up, it can go downhill. It really sucks because everything is you.”
So, with his first album finished and his body aching from night after night of constant thrashing, Segall began to think about forming a band. He went first to his college friend, Emily Epstein, a drummer. “I had to convince her to play with me, because she hadn’t played drums in a band for a long time,” he says. “I was like ‘dude, come on, please, please!’ and it took a month or two of trying to convince her to play. I think she was just shy or something.”
He also began working with a succession of bass players, Shayde Sartin of the Fresh & Onlys, then Mikal Cronin (with whom he later recorded Reverse Shark Attack in 2009), then Tim Hellman, then a girlfriend named Renee and then back to Cronin.
With a full band in place, Segall was able to push his songwriting in different directions, evolving towards a slower, more melodic, trippier sound in Lemons , Melted and, finally, Goodbye Bread, his first on Drag City. “I guess I’m just trying to make things sound a little different than they have in the past,” says Segall, struggling to articulate a process that is, clearly, at least for him, mostly intuitive. “It’s just experimenting with how to write a song, with tunes or whatever…I’m just trying to get better. I don’t know how to explain how I’m doing it.”
One thing that has changed is Segall’s mix of influences, which has broadened considerably since his skate-punking days. “For sure, back when I did that first record, I was mostly into garage rock. But now lately I’m into glam and pop and softer music and weirder music, like noise music and really crazy psych music and krautrock and stuff like that. Definitely I think that me being interested in types of music than in the past probably has gone into my songs. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it.”
As a result, like Melted, Goodbye Bread has a definite downtempo vibe, its sounds winding hazily through folky guitar cadences, Segall’s voice slowed to a codeine-sticky crawl. If the self-title edged evoked the Ramones and Dexter Romweber, Goodbye Bread sounds like late Beatles psych, though a bit unstrung and more casually delivered. Segall acknowledges the change in pace, but says he might be almost done with this particular phase. “I did kind of mellow out for a while, but the aggression is coming back,” he comments. “What I want to do is to make music like Goodbye Bread but with more aggression. I want to do that for the next record.”
Meanwhile, Segall is living the life of a working musician, spending 40% or more of his time on the road and re-acclimating grudgingly, in his rare time off, to mundane tasks like paying rent or buying groceries. You can hear some of his reservations – about the 9 to 5 and, conversely, about its more bohemian alternative – in Goodbye Bread. In “Comfortable Home,” for instance, he struggles to understand why a girlfriend wants to buy a couch. “I Am With You,” later on, lists a litany of things that Segall has had enough of: trumpets, kids, hats, dresses, the man and home or, as he puts it, “the place with the fuckin’ fog.” The dog on the cover of Goodbye Bread is not Segall’s dog. There’s no way he could have a pet given the way he lives right now.
Both on the record and over the phone, Segall sounds like a man who hasn’t wholly decided whether a regular life is preferable to touring, or vice versa. “That’s definitely part of the record, “ he says, when asked about the tension between home and the road. “but it’s not just about wanting that [settled] lifestyle because part of me doesn’t want that. There are things that I miss having but there are also things that I’m thankful for being able to do.”
For instance, when we speak, Segall is just back from Australia, where he played shows with Melbourne’s UV Race, hung with Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s Mikey Young and absorbed a scene that is very much like the one that surrounds him at home. “It’s maybe the combination of the surfing, having the ocean near by, and the music scene,” he says. Punk rock, obviously, doesn’t require sun and surf, Segall says, and some of its greatest bands have come out of snowy, landlocked cities like Cleveland and Detroit. Still, there’s something about the combination of garage-rock energy and sunniness that sets San Francisco’s current scene apart from the others.
“It’s hard to say whether there’s a San Francisco sound,” says Segall. “There’s a psychedelic element and a pop element that everybody shares – well, not everybody, but bands like Thee Ohsees, Sic Alps and Kelley Stoltz.”
“I’m definitely influenced by my friends,” he adds. “It’s not like I pick up something from John Dwyer, or learn something. It’s more like I say, ‘Oh shit, this new Oh Sees album is amazing. Damn, I’ve got to make a good record, too.’”
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Ty Segall’s Goodbye Bread
Ty Segall has followed his friends in Sic Alps over to Drag City for his new album Goodbye Bread, in which he continues his drift away from manic Elvis-y frenzies (see: “Pretty Baby, You’re So Ugly”) towards a late Beatles-esque psychedelic vibe. The giveaway track, “You Can Make the Sun Fry,” is a genuine pleasure, indolently trippy and expansively, radiantly pop. The rest of the album is pretty great, too. You’ve got to love a guy who’s willing to make a song out of his girlfriend’s desire for a nice couch in her living room…and also, he may have put his dog on the cover. Looking forward to diving deeper on this one.
The album’s out June 21, and Segall is touring everywhere but here in support:
06.16.11 Toronto, Ontario. The Garrison
06.17.11 Toronto, Ontario. Wrongbar
06.18.11 Toronto, Ontario. Bovine Sex Club
07.02.11 San Francisco, California. The Independent
07.21.11 San Diego, California. Casbah (San Diego)
07.22.11 Los Angeles, California. Eagle Rock Center
07.24.11 Las Vegas, Nevada. Beauty Bar
07.25.11 Reno, Nevada. Holland Project
07.28.11 Portland, Oregon. East End
07.30.11 Seattle, Washington. Crocodile Cafe
07.30.11 Vancouver, British Columbia. Biltmore Cabaret
07.31.11 Olympia, Washington. the Brotherhood
08.12.11 Detroit, Michigan. Magic Stick
08.14.11 San Francisco, California. Outside Lands Festival
09.15.11 Tucson, Arizona. Plush
09.16.11 Lubbock, Texas. Bash Riprocks
09.17.11 Austin, Texas. Mohawk (Outside Stage)
09.18.11 Denton, Texas. Rubbergloves
09.19.11 New Orleans, Louisiana. One Eyed Jack's
09.20.11 Birmingham, Alabama. Bottletree
09.21.11 Nashville, Tennessee. Exit/In
09.23.11 Atlanta, Georgia. Earl
09.24.11 Durham, North Carolina. Duke Coffeehouse
09.25.11 Harrisonburg, Virginia. Festival Ballroom A at JMU
09.26.11 Washington, DC. Comet Pizza
09.27.11 Baltimore, Maryland. Golden West Cafe
09.29.11 New York City, New York. Bowery Ballroom
09.30.11 Cleveland, Ohio. Beachland Tavern
10.01.11 Chicago, Illinois. Empty Bottle
10.03.11 Northfield, Minnesota. The Cave (Carleton College)
10.04.11 Iowa City, Iowa. Blue Moose
10.05.11 Omaha, Nebraska. Slowdown
10.06.11 Denver, Colorado. Hi-Dive
10.07.11 Salt Lake City, Utah. Kilby Court
The album’s out June 21, and Segall is touring everywhere but here in support:
06.16.11 Toronto, Ontario. The Garrison
06.17.11 Toronto, Ontario. Wrongbar
06.18.11 Toronto, Ontario. Bovine Sex Club
07.02.11 San Francisco, California. The Independent
07.21.11 San Diego, California. Casbah (San Diego)
07.22.11 Los Angeles, California. Eagle Rock Center
07.24.11 Las Vegas, Nevada. Beauty Bar
07.25.11 Reno, Nevada. Holland Project
07.28.11 Portland, Oregon. East End
07.30.11 Seattle, Washington. Crocodile Cafe
07.30.11 Vancouver, British Columbia. Biltmore Cabaret
07.31.11 Olympia, Washington. the Brotherhood
08.12.11 Detroit, Michigan. Magic Stick
08.14.11 San Francisco, California. Outside Lands Festival
09.15.11 Tucson, Arizona. Plush
09.16.11 Lubbock, Texas. Bash Riprocks
09.17.11 Austin, Texas. Mohawk (Outside Stage)
09.18.11 Denton, Texas. Rubbergloves
09.19.11 New Orleans, Louisiana. One Eyed Jack's
09.20.11 Birmingham, Alabama. Bottletree
09.21.11 Nashville, Tennessee. Exit/In
09.23.11 Atlanta, Georgia. Earl
09.24.11 Durham, North Carolina. Duke Coffeehouse
09.25.11 Harrisonburg, Virginia. Festival Ballroom A at JMU
09.26.11 Washington, DC. Comet Pizza
09.27.11 Baltimore, Maryland. Golden West Cafe
09.29.11 New York City, New York. Bowery Ballroom
09.30.11 Cleveland, Ohio. Beachland Tavern
10.01.11 Chicago, Illinois. Empty Bottle
10.03.11 Northfield, Minnesota. The Cave (Carleton College)
10.04.11 Iowa City, Iowa. Blue Moose
10.05.11 Omaha, Nebraska. Slowdown
10.06.11 Denver, Colorado. Hi-Dive
10.07.11 Salt Lake City, Utah. Kilby Court
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sonny Smith makes up a crapload of bands
This is an interesting project from Sonny and the Sunsets’ Sonny Smith…like there aren’t enough garage bands around, he’s invented 100 new ones. I reviewed 100 Record for Blurt and said:
For his 100 Records collection, Smith invented a hundred bands, each with its own name and aesthetic. Then he wrote them each a two-sided single, recorded these songs, occasionally with help from other Bay Area rockers, and created art for them. In a project that is part conceptual art, part San Francisco garage smackdown, he curated a collection of 200 songs and boxed them into a five-volume vinyl collection. This single disc CD compilation collects the cream of Smith's 100 records, ten songs in ten styles with Sonny and the Sunsets compadre Kelley Stoltz on drums, and guest shots from Ty Segall, the Fresh & Only's Tim Cohen, Skygreen Leopards' Donovan Quinn and the Sandwitches Heidi Alexander.
MORE
Here’s Sonny at the record launch party/gallery exhibition sponsored by KQED
For his 100 Records collection, Smith invented a hundred bands, each with its own name and aesthetic. Then he wrote them each a two-sided single, recorded these songs, occasionally with help from other Bay Area rockers, and created art for them. In a project that is part conceptual art, part San Francisco garage smackdown, he curated a collection of 200 songs and boxed them into a five-volume vinyl collection. This single disc CD compilation collects the cream of Smith's 100 records, ten songs in ten styles with Sonny and the Sunsets compadre Kelley Stoltz on drums, and guest shots from Ty Segall, the Fresh & Only's Tim Cohen, Skygreen Leopards' Donovan Quinn and the Sandwitches Heidi Alexander.
MORE
Here’s Sonny at the record launch party/gallery exhibition sponsored by KQED
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Ty Segall knocks me out again
After a slight dip in my enthusiasm – nothing extreme, just a little “eh” – circa Lemons, I’ve returned to feverish advocacy for Ty Segall, the punk-garage-rockabilly-psych phenom from SF with ties to all the bands out there that I care about – Oh Sees, Fresh & Onlys, Sic Alps, Kelley Stoltz, etc. etc. My review at Dusted (where he was dominating our college radio charts for several weeks in a row) ran yesterday.
I said, ”This is the best album yet from Ty Segall, as joy-ride thrilling as the debut, as clearly delivered as Lemons, but with stronger, more varied writing. Still sloppy, still unpremeditated, but with a little more melody, Melted is the one we’ve have been waiting for.”
Kinda wishy washy, huh?
“Girlfriend” is the best song, but it’s full of good songs.
I said, ”This is the best album yet from Ty Segall, as joy-ride thrilling as the debut, as clearly delivered as Lemons, but with stronger, more varied writing. Still sloppy, still unpremeditated, but with a little more melody, Melted is the one we’ve have been waiting for.”
Kinda wishy washy, huh?
“Girlfriend” is the best song, but it’s full of good songs.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Ty Segall again
I was hoping that Lemons would solve my Ty Segall problem, i.e. that his wonderfully raucous S-T came too late last year to wedge its way onto my 2008 list. (Indeed, I didn’t discover it until well into 2009, so much for the bleeding edge, eh?) A new record could stand in for the old one, fair is fair, everything evens out, except in this case, it doesn’t. I ended up liking Lemons a good bit less than Ty Segall and it’s hard to see how it will make its way into top 20 for 2009. Top 30 maybe, but no one cares about that. (As if not caring were any excuse…we’d all sit around doing nothing all day if we did only things that people care about.)
Okay, but I gave it a six and liked it maybe 6.5 worth and the review’s up at Blurt. You can read it right now if you want.
Or check out this track at Spinner, “It #1” (the boy loves his its.)
Okay, but I gave it a six and liked it maybe 6.5 worth and the review’s up at Blurt. You can read it right now if you want.
Or check out this track at Spinner, “It #1” (the boy loves his its.)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
WEdnesday favorites
Okay, my write-up took three hours, so I'll just hit the highlights for you guys.
Ty Segall on the porch at Beerland, late in the day, my friend Clif will vouch for this, he was awesome.
Tara Jane O'Neil at the Beauty Bar
Parenthetical Girls at the Beauty Bar
More later...I've got shows to catch.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Ty Segall
So, look what happens…I post a random video on my blog and all the sudden I’m reviewing the record, the self-titled Ty Segall record. This has also become my dancing around in the kitchen record at the moment and super, super, super fun.
Here’s what I said:
“Ty Segall is a one-man band. Not in the one-person, multi-tracked recording artist sense, but the old fashioned way. A drummer first, he sits behind an abbreviated kit, one foot on the kick drum pedal, the other pumping on a high hat with a tambourine attached. He can’t get too close to the pedals, however, because he’s got a guitar between his body and the drums, and he’s playing that, too. In fact, when he’s not using his strumming hand to slash out the rockabilly chords, he’ll sometimes reach over and slap the tambourine with his hand. He doesn’t seem to have a pair of drum sticks. Oh, and there’s a microphone dangling in front of him – probably not in the best of condition – to put the reverb’d echo onto his yelps, croons, howls and hiccups. “ More
There are some mp3s up at the record label here, including Ty’s “It” and a song by his other band, The Traditional Fools.
Here’s what I said:
“Ty Segall is a one-man band. Not in the one-person, multi-tracked recording artist sense, but the old fashioned way. A drummer first, he sits behind an abbreviated kit, one foot on the kick drum pedal, the other pumping on a high hat with a tambourine attached. He can’t get too close to the pedals, however, because he’s got a guitar between his body and the drums, and he’s playing that, too. In fact, when he’s not using his strumming hand to slash out the rockabilly chords, he’ll sometimes reach over and slap the tambourine with his hand. He doesn’t seem to have a pair of drum sticks. Oh, and there’s a microphone dangling in front of him – probably not in the best of condition – to put the reverb’d echo onto his yelps, croons, howls and hiccups. “ More
There are some mp3s up at the record label here, including Ty’s “It” and a song by his other band, The Traditional Fools.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Ty Segall...damn
Just checking out the WFMU heavily played list (and waiting for a big file to download) and I ran across this kicking video of Ty Segall playing "Pretty Baby." He's got a new record out on a label that John Dwyer (of the Coachwhips and the Oh Sees) runs called Castle Face...which I might have to check out now.
What do you think?
What do you think?
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