Rock'n'Roll

In his reckless youth, which was all of three years ago, Segall was a thrasher. He wrote two-minute burners that started quick, ended quicker, and sent audiences scampering up the walls and into the rafters. Recently, he’s become more comfortable weaving his melodic gifts into the din, using his eerie, Lennon-esque falsetto to fortify his hooks. And on his last few records, Segall has developed an uncanny ability to slide into the skin of his old-school heroes—cribbing choice tics from the likes of Neil Young, Black Sabbath, or the Groundhogs, and then weirding them up with his own coat of wobbly sonic ectoplasm. It’s the sound of yesterday remade to suit today’s signal-to-noise standards.

“His music doesn’t have the corny qualities of somebody capturing something from the past, but it has those signifiers, inspirations, and impulses,” says Rian Murphy of Drag City, which has released Segall's last two solo albums, arguing against those who would tag Ty’s schtick as pure nostalgia. “It’s as if something had been [digested and] shit out and, within that shit, was something retro.” His songs are too thrashy to register as 60s homage, too bubble-gummy to be mistaken for 70s stoner rock, and too sludgy to pass for hardcore punk. Still, in every Ty Segall song, one can detect a few frayed threads borrowed from each of these genres.

“Rock'n'roll doesn’t tell you what to think and do, it makes you feel a certain way, so you do those things on your own,” says Segall. And he knows the hit-you-in-the-face factor is key to making you do those things. Twins, which Segall performed and recorded almost entirely on his own, definitely meets the standard for skronky catharsis.