By: Ben Johnson
It’s hard not to get Ty Segall
conflated with Marc Bolan. Segall himself has released a couple of sought-after
Record Store Day T.Rex covers EPs, which doesn’t help matters, and Sleeper renders the aesthetic
similarities even more overwhelming. Both displayed a tendency to hit a beat hard and thus do the "doo doo doo bop bop bop YEAH" thing better than any of their contemporaries. Both had prolific release schedules which lent an air of deceptively dashed-off simplicity to the songs. Both artists have been tricky with project names. Both have been eager collaborators. But most importantly, both have always only sounded like themselves, regardless of what they try.
All of this earns a big WHO CARES from the
actual functioning human part of my brain, the part which routinely gives
wedgies to the unctuous little critic in there who uses phrases like “aesthetic
similarities.”
Who cares indeed. Marc Bolan died in a car accident over thirty five years
ago. We can have somebody else making music like that again. It’s allowed. Also: what? Where are you going with this? You're not going to corner me and talk to me about T.Rex nonstop for 20 minutes, are you?
This is Ty Segall’s most acoustic album
yet. Expressed in Marc Bolan terms, it’s half My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair... But Now They're
Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows and half Change (The Alternate Zinc Alloy).
God. Shut up, nerd. Who talks like that? You’re going to go ahead and put
the whole first “Tyrannosaurus Rex” album title out there and then reference
the all-demo version of one of his later albums as if anybody is supposed to be
impressed with you? Fucking Lady Gaga likes
Marc Bolan. Nobody cares. Shut up.
On Sleeper, Segall displays his signature straightforward precision
strumming, his bent, extraneously-syllabled “-ayuh” croak of a vocal delivery,
and more than a stick-shaking amount of sonic adventurousness (esp. “Queen
Lullabye”), but does so in a more punk-the-punks milieu than previously. There’s
strings on this thing. There’s whistling. I can’t tell if that one drone might
have been an accordion. What is this, Neutral Milk Hotel? Some mandolin-driven original-score-of-a-Wes-Anderson-film
ripoff in the background of a mobile-network-that-connects-us-all-in-amazing-new-ways
commercial? Are rock heads making the somebody just farted face about this, or
are we all past that? Are we all past even the idea of even bothering talking about
Ty Segall’s latest album like it’s a thing which must be done?
Yes. Yes of course, idiot. You’re starting to sound like one of those sad
old dudes who launches unbidden into an unchecked monologue about “the new Bob
Mould album” at the poor hungover record store clerk. You are more than the
natural amount of excited to talk about this, and it is a bummer. It’s reminding
the young kids of their inevitable decay. You’re a dude doing Ty Segall analysis
simply because you’re so excited not to be vacuuming Cheerios out of a minivan
you’re prematurely ejaculating over an opportunity to have a conversation about
“rock music.” It blows.
I don’t think the feel of this
album is any kind of a problem. It is not strongly enough at odds with the rest
of the Ty Segall discography to actually “freak out” any “squares.” Nor does it
feel like a “serious artist” statement. This seems more like Thee Oh Sees’ John
Dwyer breaking out the flute just because A. playing the flute is fun, and B. it’s
unfair to expect somebody to “save” rock music. To the extent that Sleeper’s more low-key points, such as “She
Don’t Care,” “Come Outside,” or “The West,” come across as a mature songwriter’s
bid for respect as a craftsman, which is some, Segall, author of the
unfuckwithable diamond that is “Imaginary Person,” has certainly earned that
right. He’s getting older too. We can’t require that Ty Segall be a one-man-band explosion doing “Pretty
Baby (You’re So Ugly)” in art lofts and punk house basements for his entire life.
You sound like fucking Jim DeRogatis right now. Face it. You're getting older a lot faster than Ty Segall ever will, pal. The way you talk and the way you think, and how in love you are with both, are poisoning the way you listen to music. Just say "Ty Segall: good tunes, the end" and be done with it.
Like Bolan before him, Ty Segall
is a guy of prodigious talents but perhaps limited range (not even a criticism;
hey, we all have limited range), who constantly sounds like he’s feeling hemmed
in within a perfect little unique sonic world he’s created. And then people
invent the word “glam” and it’s like, well, fuck you, looks like I’m “glam”
forever no matter what just because I like to swing (that’s what I’m good at) while
also rocking. Like Bolan, it’s great that there’s such a thing as a Ty Segall.
These guys are not evolutionary inevitabilities. They are singular voices,
little sidebars where the normal flow of culture stops and swirls and eddies.
Maybe, with enough time+force, they alter the topography. Maybe not.
Well, fuck, that “evolutionary inevitability” part wasn’t so bad. I mean,
we all get pretty pretentious in our brains. That’s something I could maybe
think about. I fucks with this album. It’s good. I mean it’s no Black Sabbath
Paranoid, but I’ll give it a listen.
