Cassandra Cronin on February 4th, 2017

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There was no official proclamation from the Mayor of Los Angeles or the Gods of Garage Rock or anything, but this has been Ty Segall Week in Los Angeles. Last Friday, he released his second self-titled album via Drag City Records, and the following night his band helped the Highland Park venue the Hi Hat celebrate its one-year anniversary. Then there was Thursday, the first of three consecutive sold-out performances at the Teragram Ballroom, where a blown bass amp did nothing to stop his momentum.

Segall’s brand of rock ’n’ roll has long surpassed the tired “garage” prefix, and to call it “psychedelic” at this point would probably belittle his creativity. Segall works with the kind of abandon that is best characterized as intentional: A new album means a new, fully fleshed-out face to don before the show; a new project merits a seat at the writer’s table or wherever he can make the most noise — be it behind the drumkit with Fuzz (2011-2015) and on the wonky garage-psych joy ride Hair (2012) with White Fence frontman Tim Presley, or more often at the guitar/vocals helm in various iterations of Ty Segall Bands, his most recent earning the title of The Freedom Band.

||| Photos by David Benjamin

What comes forth in all nine of Segall’s studio albums is a dogged determination to take the tools from Joe’s garage (preferably the high-wattage ones), invite his favorite fellow builders over and make an absolute mess of the backyard, until up is grass, down is blue skies and black is the vortex that just appeared at the bottom of the pool. Culling from the rock ’n’ roll wormhole that has swallowed all his influences (most notably Mark Bolan, Captain Beefheart, Black Sabbath and Syd Barrett, among many others), Segall probably realized long ago that rock music can only transcend the sum of its parts if the equation is repeated and repeated again until it mutates, or the machine overheats. Underneath what many would describe as a career wrought with repetition, a singular, radioactive force has tirelessly experimented with different ways of being within the confines of the garage-rock idiom, pushing it to the edge but never launching into free-fall, so often that the sound of Segall has become synonymous with the genre itself.

Like countless times before, Segall emerged on Saturday night at the Hi Hat with a well-oiled rock machine, enlisting longtime collaborators Mikal Cronin on bass, Charlie Mootheart on drums, as well as guitarist Emmett Kelly, and Ben Boye on the Wurlitzer. The show was dominated by a reliably epic guitar standoff between Kelly and Segall, engaging each other in a sort of riffy drag race as the rhythm section chugged away, heaving and growling against a frenzy of sonic traffic.

The melodious moments of the night were savored as pit stops — to briefly keel over and catch one’s breath as Segall’s voice soared from a croon to a howl, the vocal melodies serving as the oblique strategies that lift his creations from guitar psychobabble to pop insta-classics. His bandmates could often be seen peering at Segall with inscrutable intensity, possibly in anticipation of the unexpected, as if at any moment he might break fidelity to the song structure and careen into a fuzz war with the sonic elements ricocheting off the walls of the venue.

Songs from the new album were met with great fervor and familiarity, belying the release date of just one day prior, with popular cuts from years past like “Love Fuzz”, “Ghost” and “Sleeper” tossed in for good measure. Undoubtedly Segall will continue to cast a wide net into rock’s colorful past, carefully catching subterranean varieties that glint and bubble just below the surface, and throw them right back once he’s memorized their faces.