Ty Segall may need been getting forward of himself final 12 months when he informed an interviewer he was attempting to decelerate. “I like being prolific, however typically it lessens the entire thing, I really feel like, which isn’t what I would really like,” he stated. “So, I’m really attempting to not launch as a lot anymore.” Proper. Shortly thereafter, the ever-industrious storage rocker gave us Love Rudiments, an LP consisting solely of percussion instrumentals. It was a logical endpoint for the part of airtight experimentation that Segall entered circa 2018, wherein every new file tackled a unique 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. However his new album, Possession, means that the exploratory interval could be coming to a detailed, at the very least for now. This can be 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. In comparison with his earlier albums, although, Possession traits towards a hotter, extra brazenly nostalgic model of stadium rock, filled with power-pop jams and feel-good anthems.
A lot 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 an excellent portion of the songs. On “Possession,” Segall takes what initially feels 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 couple of destitute kleptomaniac, begins as a sparse storage dirge and steadily 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
