Ty Segall: Possession
There’s simply no stopping Ty Segall, and we should all pause for a moment to be profoundly grateful for that because, after churning out one badass album after another for most of the last 16 years, he’s saved the motherlode for his latest. Possession is a tightly wound slab of 10 craftily penned songs, each of them seeming to hang on the knife edges between psych rock, art pop and heavy leaded basement funk. And if that sounds like a mouthful, it’s only because Segall—with the help of longtime saxophonist Mikal Cronin, stalwart friend and now co-lyricist Matt Yoka, trumpeter/ trombonist Jordan Katz and a full-on string quartet—manages to squeeze so much into 40 minutes of music. Take, for instance, “Buildings”—a dark, brooding, excessively groovy rumination on confronting and conquering self-doubt boasting lyrics like, “You can’t replace the look from the face of the buildings / They see through me, they know what I’m doing.” (Segall plays drums throughout Possession, as well as bass, keyboards and his signature guitar.) Elsewhere, things feel a little more hopeful on “Alive”—which pivots on a beautifully angular string arrangement by Cronin—and the surf-punk gem “Another California Song,” which somehow also veers close to being damn near-orchestral. But deeper still, we get an instant glimpse of a real songwriter coming into his own on the opening “Shoplifter,” followed by the title track and culminating in the infectious single “Fantastic Tomb”—with all three chronicling the dangers, and the short-term upside, of feeling attracted to the darkness. Each rides a wave of garage psychedelia that channels everything from Beck to Van Halen, Zep and The Beatles—a multi-colored mélange of styles that only Segall can deliver.
