Review: Ty Segall – Melted

Ty Segall
Melted
Gonar

Remember marveling at the kids in school who could pat their heads and rub their stomachs at the same time? Ty Segall possess a similar, if slightly more advanced, set of enviable skills. In live shows, he can simultaneously play the drums, strum the guitar and sing, for instance. This ability (among others) is testament to his creativity as a musician, and something that sets him apart from most neo-this, post-that, garage rockers who attempt a similar sound with a band of three or more.

Melted is Segall’s third full-length, and it captures the essence of what it is to improve as a singer-songwriter. Earlier work, like his self-titled debut and last year’s Lemons, established Segall as a loud, energetic musician to watch in the Bay Area. On those records he unleashed a sound that seemed to come from a single amp cranked to its peak in a small closed concrete room; it’s an intimate sort of loudness, and Melted further builds on that particular foundation. It blends Segall’s noisy demeanor with broader variations in songwriting, and the album underwent a more complementary mix in the studio to create his most balanced recording to date.

He’s also singing a lot more these days. Songs like “Caesar” and “Imaginary Person” prove there’s more to the reverb-laden yelling Ty we’ve become accustomed to with previous work. Less than a third into “Caesar” begins what is perhaps the most melodic moment on the record, where Segall sings “why must the people cry?,” a line that gets repeated through the rest of the song, which also includes an intervening piano solo and ends lightly with a flute. Granted, the reverb is still there, and the yelling is a mainstay, because both are fruitful contributions to Segall’s aesthetic. But there’s a sense about Melted that the elements just mentioned are balanced to a near perfection.

As a whole, Melted is best suited for close spaces and parks with friends. The opener, “Finger,” is the kind of song you want to stumble upon at the bar after a couple pitchers, and when it ends, you realize how badly you want the rest of the album to play. The title track takes fuzz to a new level just before sputtering into the trippy “Mike D’s Coke,” which is essentially an interlude track at the halfway mark. Another standout, “Sad Fuzz,” answers the question of what the Beatles might sound like if they were from San Francisco in the post-grunge era.

Segall doesn’t generate a single dull moment here, but rather, creates a solid album that avoids the one big pitfall many garage-rock records face—becoming a blur of reverb and distortion rather than a collection of distinct tracks. You won’t be asking, “wait, didn’t we just listen to this song?” Melted elicits urges to ride a wave, take psychedelics, dance at a show, lay in the sun, chug a beer and ultimately be as cool as it sounds.