Ty Segall @ The Hemlock Tavern

Ty Segall is a one-man garage band, a barrage of punk energy who does not -- like the William Bragg he slightly resembles in approach -- take to the stage as a solo artist as if he were backed up by The Clash. This is because he makes enough noise, what with the crunchy guitar & the kick drum/tambourine & the hi-hat & the distorted vox to give any combo a serious run for their pennies. Not content with this, at The Hemlock Tavern on Friday night on punky & pansyish Polk Street he appeared to be so commited to his extreme brand of auteurism -- he writes the songs, plays them & produces them too -- that he was actually mixing the gig live & in real time, via the old-fashioned and rather charming means of adjusting the knobs on his amp.

So impressive was this show that at one point Susan turned to me and said, in a tone that could reasonably be described as awestruck: What exactly are we witnessing here?

Something special, no doubt at all about that. Because for all the excitement generated by the concept of the one-man band, Ty (who is a media studies student at USF) is a superior song-writer, and it's the songs in the end that grab your full attention.

Here's Peter Grimm's vid for Pretty Baby from Ty's new CD, which you can buy -- support the flippin' artist already! -- by following the instructions right here.



At 23 minutes the album is mercifully understanding of the demands of the world these days & like Amy's recent 40-minute slice o' brilliance it contains not one moment of filler. Even the Ramones cover (You Should Never Have Opened That Door) is decent. The kazoo & the right-down-your-aural-canal production can't help but remind you of Dylan at times (the kazoo being a sort of punk harmonica, obviously), but even in his electrified mode Mr. Zimmerman never rocked this hard.

The hooks of this CD are now firmly under the professorial skin as we find ourselves singing along to Pretty Baby, The Drag, Oh Mary and You're Not Me on an hourly basis. Ty Segall happens to be a student in MEDIA THEORY & CRITICISM this semester, but if he were not & if the prof did not know him, still we would be raving about this extremely impressive, remarkably forceful & at times almost unbearably intense debut release.

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Oh & here's a link to a recent SF Bay Guardian profile by Jen Snyder.

Images courtesy of The Game Changer.