Monolith Cocktail Blog

Album Review: Gianluigi Marsibilio 

Ty Segall ‘Deforming Lobes’
(Drag City) 29^th March 2019

The gun that killed Van Gogh will be sold in early summer. But if you don’t have the money to hurt yourself, figuratively speaking, listen to Deforming Lobes by Ty Segall; a concentrate of wickedness that will leave you lying in bed and breathless.

The record is taken from a series of live shows, so well built that it looks like a jam session in the studio, its production is incredible and can connect, even through digital support, each listener, to the room in Los Angeles where the concerts were held.

The record is, in the endless production of Segall, already essential because it allows everyone to get a precise idea of who it is, what it does and how it lives.

In a beautiful piece in the New Yorker on David Baker are these words, taken from the poet: “The only conclusion to be drawn is that “there are so many, too // many of us”; and yet “the world keeps making – this makes no sense – / more”, Ty Segall, plays with polysemy, with the sense to give meaning to the impossible.

The noise of the crowd, even if it’s a live show, is eaten by the infernal sound of the instruments that travel on stage and splash on pieces like ‘They Told Me Too’ or ‘Breakfast Eggs’. The record really gives a new meaning to Segall’s complete production and for the first time, after listening to a live record, I didn’t get bored and indolent.

The enigmatic and shining The Groundhogs are a point of reference and then the cover of ‘Cherry Red’ is fundamental, to immerse us, once again, in the record and in the world of Ty.

The record is subaqueous, in the sense that it makes us descend, layer after layer, to an area near the Marianne Falls.

Smoothing and gliding over new ideas for one’s musical future seems to be the intention of this record: A sort of scale to understand where to shift the weight of unpredictability for the near future.

To get the work he’s done with the Freedom Band is essential to the launch of Deforming Lobes, which is already a fundamental step towards understanding the elastic and eclectic madness of Ty Segall.

You want one last reason to launch yourself into this record: it was edited by Steve Albini, who between a poker tournament and the other, gives us these wonders of accuracy.