“I look into the mirror almost every day. Who is this man looking my way?” These words cut through the CB-radio fidelity of “You’re Not Me,” a grinding garage-blues number from Ty Segall’s 2008 self-titled debut. In the decade since, the prolific Laguna Beach native has never stopped asking himself that question. Probably because the answer’s always been different.
Segall has released 13 full-length albums, and nearly all their covers show his face in some state of mutation or dissimulation, as if to signify the musical metamorphoses catalogued within. The front of his 2015 EP, Mr. Face, even features Segall looking into an actual mirror, his hands descending from his brow to reveal stark white pupils. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then Segall’s is a blank slate, capable of assuming wildly different personae on an album-to-album basis.
There’s a good chance the Ty of 2008 wouldn’t recognize his 2018 self. The kick-drum-stomping one-man band has matured into a full-fledged rock auteur set to release his most ambitiously eclectic album to date with Freedom’s Goblin, a 19-song colossus that pinballs from furious hardcore to sax-sweetened folk lullabies to post-punk disco to luminous power-pop. The album’s crazy-quilt quality underscores the fact that Segall’s catalog isn’t so much a summation of linear evolutionary phases as a blur of wild mood swings, with each oscillation seemingly pushing him to greater extremes. And in that blur, a basic truth tends to get obscured: Ty Segall has become one of the best pure rock’n’roll songwriters of the 21st century.
He can weld a Lennon melody to a power chord as effortlessly as Kurt Cobain, but he swaps out the self-loathing despair for wild, ecstatic abandon. He can shift from incendiary shredding to humble serenading as easily as Jack White, but without all the fisticuffs. And while his influences—from the Beatles and Bowie to Sabbath and the Stooges—may be obvious, Segall’s records rarely feel like retro-rock museum pieces. He’s less interested in faithfully recreating the sounds of his heroes than in capturing the shock-and-awe sensation of hearing them for the first time.
Thankfully, he’s been free to explore his every whim without being saddled with any sort of Rock Savior messiah complex. That Segall’s never had a huge crossover hit is ultimately for the best: He’s never been forced to make an awkward, expensive video for MTV, an ill-advised collaboration with a Top 40 producer, or even the middle-of-the-road rock album that most garage acts eventually crank out once they hit their thirties. As Freedom’s Goblin proves, even as Segall’s producing the prettiest songs of his career, it only spurs on his more reactionary, anarchic impulses. But the album isn’t just a showcase of its songwriter’s many moods—it’s a testament to his ability to master each style he attempts. Ahead of Freedom’s Goblin’s release next week (Jan. 26), we chart the evolution of Ty Segall’s multiple personalities.
“Oh Mary” is Ty Segall in his most primitive state, all rusty-wheeled locomotive blues riffs, static-soaked howls, and the kind of kick-drum bounce and tambourine rattle that seems powered by restless-leg syndrome. But in the multitasking melee, you can hear an artist dreaming of greater horsepower—a fantasy he’d fulfill in 2012 by re-recording the song as a full-torque rocker with the Ty Segall Band.
By his third album, Segall was still handling most of the instrumentation himself, but began corralling guest players to flesh out the sound. Among these was a name that would soon become familiar to those who peruse Segall’s liner notes: Charlie Moothart, who supplies the rumbling, hand-clapped backbeat to this glam knockout, and went on to appear on the majority of Segall’s subsequent records.
Over the course of 2012, the full scope of Segall’s talents came into focus, as he released three markedly different albums: Hair, Slaugtherhouse, and Twins. No song better encapsulates his breakneck work rate during this period than “You’re the Doctor,” a manic blast of garage-punk that’s as hooky as it is unhinged.
On his more recent records, Segall has favored a more artfully sculpted style of noise, dispensing the distortion in morse-code spurts rather than buckshot blasts. This frantic Freedom’s Goblin highlight boasts no lack of freaky fuzz riffage, but it clears the way for heliumed harmonies straight off a late-’60s Who record.
After 11 tracks of ear-blasting blues-punk, “An Ill Jest” appears at the end of Segall’s debut like a cotton-covered Q-tip to soothe your auditory canals. With its wandering acoustic strums and wake-‘n’-bake lyrics (“hello flower, why do you grow so slow?”), it’s a faded early snapshot of Segall’s exploratory instincts in bloom.
To date, Hair is Segall’s only full-album collaboration with kindred spirit Tim Presley (aka White Fence), but the latter’s brand of Brit-flavored vocalese left an indelible impression on the more glam and psych-leaning material Segall has produced since. On this woozy George Harrison homage, the duo are so perfectly in sync, they practically fuse into one person.
Amid Ty Segall’s overstuffed discography, 2014’s Manipulator would be the closest thing to a Sgt. Pepper–scaled statement, exhibiting a greater attention to craft and arrangement. The opening title track is a masterstroke of orchestrated anarchy, its pulsating organ riff and dazed melody leading listeners toward the coming storm of gooey guitar arpeggios, raygun zaps, and droning noise. When Segall’s cheery, multi-tracked voice appears for the finale, it’s not unlike the chorus of pagans gleefully serenading Edward Woodward’s demise in The Wicker Man.
“I’m sick of the sunshine/I wish I could make it blue for you,” a dispirited Segall sings atop this song’s solemn piano intro. But for all his talents, he can’t control the weather, and on “Rain,” the clouds soon part to let in a sunburst of radiant brass fanfares, shimmering lead-guitar squeals, and beautifully sighing harmonies.
The toilet-bowl ambience of Segall’s early records can make his words difficult to parse, but the corrosive jangle of “Die Tonight” achieves just enough clarity to reveal his sinister side. The warnings of imminent doom are made all the more unnerving by the song’s sun-dazed, ’60s-pop melody.
Really, the entirety of Slaughterhouse could be featured in this section, but the sludge-tastic “Wave Goodbye” stands out for both its bone-crushing heft—the closest he had ever gotten to pure ’70s metal, at least outside of his Fuzz gig—and Segall’s macabre performance. “Now it’s time to drink the wine, and wave goodbye/Bye bye!,” he squeals with devious delight, like a cult leader who’s just tricked a minion into drinking a fatal dose of cyanide.
For Emotional Mugger, Segall didn’t just adopt a menacing on-record persona, he slapped on a Buffalo Bill–worthy flesh mask to further terrorize fans and morning-show hosts. On an album with a discomfiting amount of songs about procuring sweets from strangers, the pulverizing “Candy Sam” is the most PSA-worthy. But as the song fades into its whistled outro, you can hear how even Segall’s nastiest songs are embedded with insidious nursery-rhyme melodies.
Taking cues from his side band GØGGS, “Meaning” is a circle-pit communion between Segall and his wife, Denée. She provides the seething lead vocal to this distortion-caked hardcore rager, whose climactic cry—“you’re filled with shit!”—functions as a readymade retort to asshole bosses, cheating ex-lovers, and fake presidents alike.
If we can point to any single song in Segall’s ping-ponging discography that qualifies as a crucial turning point, it’s the title track to his 2011 Drag City debut. Even Segall’s most unruly songs were always anchored by sturdy hooks, but on “Goodbye Bread,” he presents a beautifully melancholic melody free of noise or subversive intent, yielding a sweetly slack, roll-outta-bed ballad that foregrounds the Marc Bolan and Big Star influences that would become evermore integral to his music.
Following Segall’s whirlwind 2012, the mostly acoustic Sleeper was the comedown crash, one spurred by the death of his father and his mother’s deteriorating mental health. The elegiac title track is Segall at his most emotionally raw and vulnerable, and though it’s built from just acoustic strums and violin sweeps, it’s as powerful as any of his amped-up rockers.
This glam-folk gem is Segall’s love letter to Denée, though it betrays a lingering discomfort with sentimentality: “I don’t want to call you ‘baby’/I don’t want to call you ‘lady,’” he sings. So he settles for the much sexier “cherry-fizzle sundae.”
Like “Orange Color Queen,” this lovey-dovey Freedom’s Goblin standout begins as a solitary acoustic serenade before blossoming into a more exultant expression of affection. Only this time he brings along a sax-toting Mikal Cronin to play the role of Lloyd Dobler’s boombox.
On top of showcasing Segall’s more tuneful side, Goodbye Bread also melted down his hotwired garage-rockers into slower, grungier tempos. “You Make the Sun Fry” is truth in advertising, with a beaming pop chorus left to sizzle in the scuzz.
Just as the Kinks could rewrite the same song several times over, Twins’ titanic opener essentially clones “You Make the Sun Fry” and blasts it with extra UV radiation until it sprouts tumors.
The kick-off track to Segall’s 2017 self-titled release is both a sardonic mockery of rock’n’roll excess (“Baby gonna break a guitar/Gonna make it a real big star”) and an unabashed celebration of it, triggering an avalanche of monstrous riffs from which no six-string could emerge unscathed.
If “Break a Guitar” encourages destruction, then “Alta” uses the same tools in the name of preservation. It’s Segall’s tribute to California—specifically, the unblemished paradise roamed by the region’s Indigenous people before European settlers moved in. What you hear isn’t just a simple collision of gilded melody and thundering rock, but a clash of civilizations.
At the time of Melted’s release, this strange 90-second interlude just seemed like a throwaway scrap—the bed-track for an unfinished garage-rock tune shot through a murky dub filter. But in hindsight, it was the first Ty Segall song to really emphasize a bottom end that would become more pronounced on later releases.
Another rough-sketch experiment in rhythm, this instrumental was seemingly designed as the chase theme for some imaginary cop flick from the 1970s. But its bongo-slapped backbeat also feels like a dry run for …
… the track where Segall proves he was born to boogie. Part Ziggy, part ZZ, “Feel” works up a heavy-duty choogle that eventually leads to a percussion-clanging breakdown, making this the first Ty Segall song you could perform at your local park’s drum circle.
There are no lack of cover songs in Segall’s canon, though they’re typically sourced from record-collector perennials like T. Rex and Captain Beefheart. “Every 1’s a Winner” marks the first time Segall faithfully reinterprets the sort of ’70s disco-funk standard you’d find in your average wedding band’s repertoire. Ten years on from his debut, Segall is still looking into the mirror—only this one is shaped like a ball.
