Barely has the mud settled on his final escapade, and Ty Segall, Californian dreamer and probably the most prolific creators in all of rock’n’roll, sidles by as soon as extra. Only for context, Segall’s 2021 noticed not one however two new collections of music. The primary was Harmonizer, a ripping rock album that dropped with out warning or fanfare in August 2021. The second expanded Ty’s temporary but additional – a movie rating for director Matt Yoka’s Whirlybird, a documentary following the Los Angeles Information Service, whose roving helicopter tracked wrongdoings throughout LA’s city sprawl all through the Eighties and ’90s. Time for a pause? In fact not.
Seasoned Ty watchers will know that he tends to observe a zig with a zag, and so it’s with Howdy, Hello. It does, broadly, what Harmonizer didn’t. The place that album was electrical, artificial and uncooked, Howdy, Hello is basically acoustic, rustic-sounding and steeped in a type of fey, offbeat prettiness. The place Harmonizer felt just like the work of a full stay band, Howdy, Hello bears the mark of a file made alone in isolation, or one thing near it. Ty’s album covers all the time do a very good job of obliquely speaking their contents, and that is no exception. A black and white photograph taken by Ty’s spouse Denée on a mountaineering path close to their Topanga Canyon dwelling, it photos him balanced impishly on a tree department, holding his guitar out in entrance of him like a talisman. Suppose a freaky flower baby, or maybe a mischievous forest spirit, spinning out riddles in alternate for protected passage.
This isn’t an all-new mode for Segall. Written and recorded at Ty’s own residence studio, Harmonizer, in 2020, it clocks in at a comparatively lean 10 songs and 34 minutes, making it of a bit with albums like Goodbye Bread and Sleeper: song-focused affairs that advance a constant sound and magnificence, versus the pinball eclecticism of Freedom’s Goblin or Manipulator.
Howdy, Hello brings a few Ty’s prime influences to the fore. His catalogue incorporates a wealthy seam of songs that channel Marc Bolan – assume Manipulator’s “Don’t You Need To Know (Sue)”, or Sleeper’s “Candy CC”. Bolan’s affect – particularly the psychedelically inclined people of his early Tyrannosaurus Rex incarnation – is writ throughout Howdy, Hello. One other touchstone is perhaps Donovan – “Blue” appears to channel his whimsical supply and a style for surreal lyrical flights of fancy. But as ever, Ty wears his influences in a relaxed method: tried on like a paisley shirt or feather boa, then discarded.
Is that this, maybe, Ty’s lockdown album? Definitely, there are moments that appear to seize one thing of the pandemic expertise – a life spent between 4 partitions, the stir-crazy results of isolation, the times charted by the rhythm of morning passing into night time. Some songs evoke dwelling as a spot of security and luxury. “Good Morning” opens the album in a temper of dazed romantic bliss. “Good morning, woman/We are able to keep inside/The world is the place we each lay/On the pillows we’re advantageous”, Ty sings in a sleepy falsetto earlier than layering his multi-tracked voice in a type of daybreak refrain. Elsewhere, the temper is extra curdled and unusual. “Saturday Pt 2” commences with a dismal scene: “In a room we’re ready/Dwelling life behind closed doorways/Solely singing concerning the flat and painted drywall/And concrete flooring…”. However then immediately the guitars start to chew, the drums kick in, and across the track’s midpoint, a saxophone solo from long-time collaborator Mikal Cronin lifts the track onto a better aircraft. In moments like this, you’ll be able to visualise Ty sat at dwelling, utilizing music to blast himself out of boredom and into a brand new actuality.
A pervasive temper of isolation makes this one among Ty’s most introspective albums. Inside, there are intimate love lullabies; songs that go down rabbit holes of ruthless self-doubt and self-examination; lyrics that mirror on the concept of fixing your self to make life simpler, or to please one other. I need to begin over, however who would I be?/All of the errors I’ve made are why I’m me, he sings on “Over”. However Segall just isn’t one to play issues utterly straight, so these types of ruminations are pockmarked with twists of artifice and sudden impositions of surreal imagery. “Don’t you’re feeling higher/While you’re sporting my cement sweater?” sings Ty on “Cement”, a monitor that by some means feels stranger every time you take heed to it. The vocal is exactly enunciated and filled with curious, arch mannerisms; the chord modifications have a prickly, unresolved high quality that ensures any real consolation dangles simply out of attain; and the monitor ends with Ty’s voice layered into cascading harmonies, la-la-la-ing himself foolish.
Even the place Howdy, Hello grapples with tough emotions, there’s a craft and prettiness to the music that transcends any bummer vibes. Ty handles a lot of the drumming himself in his characteristically swinging, Ringo-ish model. “Over” and “Distraction” have a limber, freewheeling sense of momentum that nudges them in direction of the folk-jazz nexus at present occupied by figures like Ryley Walker. And there’s an album spotlight within the form of “Don’t Lie”, a deep reduce by the Oakland-based lo-fi group The Mantles. Ty has some previous kind in delivering cowl variations that tear the unique a brand new one, however right here he takes the alternative route. The unique’s breezy paisley-shaded storage is reworked into a fragile acoustic hymn that accentuates the lyric about overcoming unhealthy and unhappy instances. It’s a gem.
And whereas it’s hardly the album’s set model, right here and there Howdy, Hello rocks out. The title monitor is the file’s one actual barnstormer – three swift minutes of glammy chorusing, churning riffs and thundering caveman drums that’s pleasant, and never only for its explosive incongruity. “Trying At You”, in the meantime, is a hangover from the Harmonizer periods. A band effort that sees Ty assisted by Charles Moothart on drums and Ben Boye on Rhodes, its folk-rocky strum sports activities a scorching fuzz guitar solo, but additionally a gorgeous “Pricey Prudence”-style coda that revolves spherical and spherical like a ballerina in a music field.
So sure, Howdy, Hello is one among Ty’s most lean and targeted albums up to now. However the nearer you get, the extra you see its idiosyncrasies. Heartfelt and playful, homespun and surreal, down within the dumps and head-over-heels in love: right here is Ty Segall in all his great contradictions. After 9 tracks wherein the partitions typically appear to be closing in, on the closing “Distraction” the door swings open. “So sing me a distraction/I need to know what occurs/We’ll take a stroll outdoors”, he sings. And with a candy goodbye, the file ends, and Ty is gone – off to search out his subsequent journey. The place will we discover him subsequent? Who is aware of, however previous proof suggests we received’t be ready lengthy.
