Do you like Garages? I do. Do you like Rocks? Wow, Me TOO!!! Therefore, you must love Garage Rock! Let me take this week to introduce you to the patron saint of Garage Rock himself.

Rumour has it that Ty is the illegitimate love child of Jack White and Josh Homme. It is said that when he was born, JW and JH locked him in the basement of their suburban backsplit home, occasionally throwing in sandwiches and Hit Parader magazines.

Instead of toy cars and blocks, he grew up amidst germanium fuzz pedals, a used green sparkle drum kit, three vintage downtuned guitars, a rickenbacker bass, a set of Orange amps and a pile of 70’s vinyl. Ty emerged fully formed in 2008, cooler than you and with more fashion sense. He hotwired the station wagon, raised the garage door, and had his first gig before lunch.

I gave some serious consideration to just doing one or two of Segall’s bands, but it turns out that he has been in more bands than the average American has had sexual partners You may know him from Fuzz or from his eponymous Ty Segall Band...but he has also been in or collaborated with Broken Bat, the CIA, GØGGS, Wasted Shirt, Red Dog Saloon, The Traditional Fools, Epsilons, Party Fowl, Sic Alps, and the Perverts. I may have actually made one of those up. You don’t know which, because by the time you look it up online he will have formed and joined that band already. You could have done it yourself, but you are not Ty Segall, so you must read about it here and regret not getting his latest album on splatter vinyl.

Face it. They guy is a total band slut. Diving into this guy’s discography is a complete rabbit hole. I thought King Gizzard wrote a lot of albums, but there are like 13 people in that band, counting the Emus. Segall is a multi-instrumentalist who has released a dozen studio albums, even more collaborations, an entire boatload of singles and EPs, and a complete whack load of albums with his various bands. He is like the vinyl collector’s nightmare.

His incredibly prolific output is matched only by his talent. He personifies the underground musical scene. This week’s featured artist is TY SEGALL.

About Them

Ty Segall is from Laguna Beach, California. He was adopted by his parents in 1987. He grew up in a mixture of MTV reality shows (including one filmed at his high school), surfing culture, hippies, and artists. He earned a degree in Media Studies from the University of San Francisco. This unique blend of influences can all be found in his music. Segall found no joy in Media Studies I mean, who does? I thought that was a course you take to fill out your semester when you can’t get into a Film class. Instead of Media, Segall turned to music. He started with the drums and then became a true multi-instrumentalist. At age 21, he released his debut self-titled album, Ty Segall. One reviewer said that it “...sounds like a test run, a document of an artist discovering what all he can do by himself.” Segall’s musical journey has been a quest to find himself. On that quest, between 2008 - 2014, he released an average of one full album a year.
Though I have labeled him as Garage Rock, the real truth about Segall is more nuanced. His feet are firmly planted in the Garage, but he reaches into other genres with ease. Bowie-esque, Segall easily adopts different themes and styles depending on his musical mood. His early work in the Pre-Fuzz era is unabashedly Garage-y: cuts like Oh Mary, Girlfriend, and You’re the Doctor would easily be at home on an album by The Strokes.
He could have been from Haight-Ashbury with psychedelic cuts like Time, Manipulator, and Rain. With Fuzz, he cranks out grunge-metal-sludge on tracks like Earthen Gate, Sleigh Ride, and Pipe. He does High Concept Art Rock. He does Glam. He does Grunge. He even does Funk. Since his output is so prolific, I am going to try to simplify Segall’s music into two blocks: Pre-Fuzz (2008 - 2013), and from Fuzz until present (2013 - today). Why, you may ask, would I just focus on one band out of all his many projects? Because Fuzz is the project he has returned to the most, with three full studio albums.
I’m sure that someone over on their subreddit is going to write a diatribe on how I have neglected the deep and abiding contributions that Mikal Cronin has made to the full body of Segall’s work anyway, so they can also add in my abject neglect of Epsilons and Party Fowl as well. From 2008 - 2013, Segall grew from tentative newcomer to auteur, culminating in a 3-album spasm in 2012 with the releases of Hair (as part of the duo White Fence), Slaughterhouse (which credits the Ty Segall Band) and his most critically acclaimed album to date, Twins. Listening to Twins is like diving face first into an all-you-can-eat buffet of sound. Ballads are right alongside blistering blasts of distorted guitars. There’s a slow stoner jam right next to psychedelic rock. It was on Twins that Segall really found his identity - and that was that he could be whatever he wanted to be. He decided he did not want to be defined by any one genre (which I think I tried to do in the very first paragraph of this write up. Whoops.) Though Segall had frequently collaborated with other artists and other bands, he committed to the band Fuzz in 2013. This grungy, Black Sabbath-comes-to-California project saw Segall step out of the garage and do his best Ginger Baker impression, handling percussion and lead vocals. Fuzz were a traditional power trio who doubled down (tripled down?) on hard rock, driving beats and down tuned riffage.
Many fans discovered Segall for the first time through Fuzz. They released four singles, one EP, and three studio albums. If you are intimidated by the deep dive Segall represents, I highly recommend starting with their self-titled first album. It is a lumbering beast that will assault your senses. It will scratch that Kyuss itch. The second album, II, picks up right where the first one leaves off. 2020’s III is 36 minutes of Heavy Metal that will punch you directly in the solar plexus and leave your ears ringing.
In the early Fuzz years Segall still somehow managed to release two solo albums. Sleeper came out in 2013, before the first Fuzz album. Sleeper was Segall’s deeply personal response to the death of his adoptive father and his subsequent estrangement from his mother.
In a 10 minute smoke break between acts on a tour in Germany, he wrote and recorded the entire album Manipulator, which dropped in 2014. (note: some details of the creative process here may or may not be completely made up). Manipulator was a massive double album that could easily have been two shorter works, and is somehow like a greatest hits compilation consisting entirely of all new songs.
From 2016 to the present, Segall has leapt from project to project. In The Muggers, a high concept art band, he wore a baby-face mask and adopted the moniker “Sloppo”. In 2017 he released a second confusingly self-titled album, Ty Segall (Side note: If you are Ty Segall, I think you may get to a point in your career where naming albums is hard.) This time, he came out with something more Glam than Garage. Maybe some sort of Glam-Garage-Rock?? Carrying on, 2018 saw the release of Freedom’s Goblin, a rock roller coaster that has originals and covers and a range of styles. Because he made a deal with the devil to be the world’s most prolific recording artist, Segall also dropped the album First Taste in 2019.
Another interesting thing about him that drives music collectors completely bonkers is that he doesn’t just release music on vinyl - it comes out on cassette tape as well. Seriously, who listens to music on cassette tapes anymore? That’s as out of date as owning a Zune. During the pandemic, Segall released a series of six free cover songs on Bandcamp. He followed this up with the 2021 album Harmonizer, which was recorded in his own home studio. You know how some people learned to bake (or get baked) during COVID? Apparently, Segall built his own studio. Because, you know, he just wasn’t really committed to recording before then. Segall’s most recent release was 2022’s Hello, Hi. This is the dude’s 14th full album as a solo artist.
That really is ridiculous, when you think about it. Especially when you remember that JHo and the boys only have half the number of albums.
Harmonizer was a grungy, heavy record. Hello, Hi is more acoustic and melodic. Both albums are like two sides of a coin, in that Segall’s songwriting expertise is clearly on display in any milieu. Honestly, the sheer volume of music Segall has produced puts him in a rare group of artists out there today. Segall is the Godfather of Garage Rock, but that is only the start of understanding him. He has never had a top 40 hit. He has never compromised his artistic vision. He has never released a cookbook (proving that he still needs to learn how to bake). He is an explorer and a visionary. He has mastered different styles and can slide between them with ease.
You need to check him out. Just don’t blame me when you find yourself on Discogs ordering obscure vinyl.
That’s on you.
Links to QOTSA

We know that Josh Homme is not only a great musician, he is a huge music fan. He frequently seems most at ease when he is talking about other artists and other bands. It is well known that he is a fan of Ty Segall. Josh has played Segall’s music on The Alligator Hour. Ty Segall opened for QOTSA on the Villains tour in 2018 in San Francisco.

One reviewer has said of Segall: “With Manipulator, it’s official—Ty Segall is the next Josh Homme, a purveyor of underground-spawned, arena-ready rock anthems for a world that just can’t give up on such a titillating oxymoron.”

Their Music

Lovely One

Pretty Baby You’re So Ugly

Taste

The Singer

Break a Guitar

Oh Mary

Girlfriend

Goodbye Bread

Where Your Head Goes

My Head Explodes

The Hill

Time

The Man Man

Emotional Mugger

Californian Hills

Cents

Thank God for Sinners

Manipulator

Candy Sam

Orange Color Queen

Hello, Hi

Sleigh Ride - Fuzz

Pipe - Fuzz

Fuzz’s Fourth Dream - Fuzz

Show Them Some Love

/r/TySegall

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