In the music scene today, different genres are blending together in lots of unforeseen ways, which has led to some groundbreaking new tunes and ways of looking at music.
One of the most intense and prolific examples of this mixing and stretching out of different styles is California-based multi-instrumentalist Ty Segall. Since 2008, Segall has refined and grown his raucous, freewheeling garage-psych rock into a boisterous, soulful, meticulously-honed melange of blistering garage rock, sauntering psychedelic folk, spacey ambience, full-on atonal noise rock, and supercharged, high-octane punk. Segall’s latest effort, backed by the Freedom Band (his newest backing unit), is Freedom’s Goblin, a sprawling, electrifying slab of madness from one of the most captivating voices in modern rock.
From opener “Fanny Dog” (a track written about Segall’s dachshund), the album is off to the races. A burly rhythm section anchors Segall’s spiraling guitar solos and the screeching saxophone over dancing organ for some straight up rock and roll. Next up is “Rain”, a complete departure, more reminiscent of The Dear Hunter with ominous, lilting vocals over soft piano that builds to a deafening crescendo of dissonant guitar fuzz. Third track “Every 1’s a Winner” is some baby-making music if I’ve ever heard it, coming in hot with some grungy funk, all underneath Segall’s screeching howl.
From here we start to dig into the meat of the album; at 75 minutes, it’s Segall’s longest record, with plenty of room for him to run wild. On tracks like “Despoiler of Cadaver” and “The Main Pretender”, Segall leers in a processed voice over gloopy bass, upbeat drums and hard-edged funk-sauce guitars, while on songs such as “My Lady’s On Fire”, “You Say All the Nice Things,” and righteous album closer “And, Goodnight (Sleeper),” it seems like he directly channels the songwriting spirit of the Grateful Dead, with airy, echoing droplets of guitar dumped into melodic bass and loping drums, with some juicy key sprinkled in for good measure Honestly, there is so much sheer variety here; it seems like he set out to just see how many different styles he could do all at once. While some may be turned off by the out-of-control antics of tracks like “Prison” and “Talkin 3,” they may be delighted by the surging guitar-heroics of “She” and “Alta.”
Ty Segall has never been one to be constrained to any one particular style, and Freedom’s Goblin may be his most diverse and disorienting album to date. If you can make it through in one sitting, you might need to take a breather afterward, because once the album really gets going, it only lets up for a second or two here and there. In terms of our music scene today, Freedom’s Goblin is a perfect example of how the current genres are colliding and producing new forms of music and inspiring a new generation of artists who might be afraid to be themselves; Ty Segall is certainly not afraid of that. Check out Freedom’s Goblin, but strap in; you’re in for a wild wide.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Freedom’s Goblin by Ty Segall is available at music retailers everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQl7Wyk2I_k
