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Ty Segall may need been getting forward of himself final yr when he instructed an interviewer he was attempting to decelerate. “I love being prolific, but sometimes it lessens the whole thing, I feel like, which isn’t what I would like,” he mentioned. “So, I’m actually trying to not release as much anymore.” Right. Shortly thereafter, the ever-industrious storage rocker gave us Love Rudiments, an LP consisting totally of percussion instrumentals. It was a logical endpoint for the section of airtight experimentation that Segall entered circa 2018, through which every new file tackled a distinct aesthetic: the unrecognizably deep-fried covers of Fudge Sandwich, the synth-pop dreamscapes of Harmonizer, the basement-dwelling prog-punk of Three Bells.
Now approaching 40, Segall exhibits no indicators of slowing down. But his new album, Possession, means that the exploratory interval could be coming to a detailed, at the very least for now. This is a little bit of a back-to-basics file for him, which is to say that it falls someplace within the matrix of glam-inflected psychedelia that broadly defines his catalogue from Goodbye Bread to the magisterial double LP Freedom’s Goblin. Compared to his earlier albums, although, Possession developments towards a hotter, extra brazenly nostalgic model of stadium rock, filled with power-pop jams and feel-good anthems.
Much of the levity comes from the broader palette at Segall’s disposal. There’s an virtually Steely Dan-ish buoyancy to the horns that blast on many choruses, and a string quartet lends a breezy dignity to a superb portion of the songs. On “Possession,” Segall takes what initially appears like an electro-convulsed “Ziggy Stardust” and slowly refashions it right into a brass-driven epic worthy of David Clayton-Thomas period Blood, Sweat & Tears, which could be so far as he has gotten from the stripped-down thrasher rock of his youth. As if to retrace that evolution in actual time, “Shoplifter,” a tune a few destitute kleptomaniac, begins as a sparse storage dirge and regularly accretes instrumental layers till it climaxes with two saxophones chasing one another’s tails as violins climb into the ether.
Segall co-wrote most of Possession’s lyrics with Matt Yoka, who has directed the majority of the rocker’s music movies, together with the one through which Segall sits immobile on the heart of an more and more rowdy kegger, trying to sing the plaintive “Goodbye Bread” as half-naked revelers flail and stumble upon him. The file is populated by equally poker-faced loners attempting to shrug off the absurdity of a world in gradual decline. “Smoke in the summer/The metallic taste like rubber,” Segall sings over an ominous, burbling synth line on “Hotel”: “Traffic in the ocean/Help me with the lotion.”
But that ethereal nonchalance is a part of what makes Possession really feel like a barely lower-stakes effort for Segall, as if in spite of everything his current experiments, he was content material to easily bask within the glow of his classic-rock data for some time. On “Fantastic Tomb,” he channels Edgar Allan Poe in spinning a gothic story about being lured right into a cellar, however the tune’s strutting dad-rock groove sounds prefer it may very well be a Grand Funk Railroad B-side, dashed off between stops on Segall’s final tour. “I know you want to sing another California tune/So sing along to another California song,” Segall sings on “Another California Song.” This quintessentially fuzzed-out power-pop anthem would possibly as properly be a mission assertion for the file. The album is stuffed with acquainted strikes—however comfortingly so, heralding a return to the California songs which have lengthy made Segall the golden boy of the Golden State’s psychedelic revival.
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