13 October 2019 (gig)
16 October 2019
At only 32 years of Age Ty Segall has written and recorded a staggering amount of material. His most recent effort, First Taste being his 12th album proper ( Not even including live and covers albums ) under his own name. The constant outpouring of rich and diverse content just continues to pour from his fascinating imagination and out of every pore in his body in the countless side projects and collaborations he's involved with. The creative mind he possesses seems impossible to harness.
On this tour along with his Freedom Band he's playing the whole of new record First Taste in it's entirety, but that's just the appetiser! He's doing a series of residencies where the second half of the show is one of four different albums from his back catalogue. Goodbye Bread, Sleeper, Emotional Mugger have all featured on the tour, but tonight it's the turn of his masterpiece Manipulator. The album that started this writer's fascination with all things Ty.
Some of the crowd here tonight have already been the two previous nights and (at least partly) know what to expect. We all know what to expect setlist wise. Ty and the Freedom band come on stage, Ty starts off the night on a mandolin, not a guitar. His band all face him as the sonic noise blast of Taste assaults us. Like a child bored with his new toy, Ty swiftly switches to the drums on the 2nd drum kit sat at the front of the stage for the end of the first song.
Ty's five strong Freedom band swap and change instruments all night. By Whatever, the 2nd song in, Mikal Cronin has already swapped from keyboard to some kind of saxaphone and Shannon Lay has ditched the 2nd bass guitar for a Bouzouki! in addition to Ty jumping on and off the drums, there's Charles Moothart banging the other set of skins, Emmett Kelly seems to stick to the bass and we suspect Ben Boye, stood at the back is on keyboards and some kind of electric harp.
There's so much going on, it's no wonder the band seem totally focused on each other, and primarily Ty, he leads them like some kind of evil conductor and it's fantastic.
With this host of weird and wonderful instruments on the go on First Taste there's no room for guitars, not one in sight. First Taste is introspective, diverse and extremely intense. It's performed with such vigour with songs such as The Fall and When I Met My Parents Pt. 3 completely lifting themselves off the vinyl.
A bit of a mosh pit starts for the last few First Taste tracks but when Lone Cowboys finishes there's no break, and as soon as the opening keyboard notes of Manipulator kick in I find myself enveloped in the huge pit and remain there for the whole 17 tracks!
How this album didn't launch this guy into the stratosphere I still don't quite know, he should by rights be playing in a place 5 or 10 times this size, but we have him here in this venue that takes 1000, maybe 1500, what a privilege.
OK, First Taste has some tunes but this epic psychedelic rock masterpiece is bursting at the seams with them and this crowd know we are witnessing something special. The chance to see the whole of this album performed live feels like a lottery win. The Singer, It's Over, Feel.... Ty's multi instrumental talents are all very well but he really comes to life when he has a guitar strapped around him.
The guitars are well and truly back and the crowd is going insane. As witnessed at an Oh Sees gig earlier this year, crowd surfing is definitely back too! We have to keep our wits about us to make sure we don't get an accidental boot in the head, it's all in good spirits though and we, as a crowd try our best not to let anyone hit the deck with too much force, at least not face first!
Nothing to criticise about the band (apart from the fact they face each other all night, not their audience) but as far as the venue's concerned there wasn't any sign of any water being passed out into the crowd for us to either drink or pour over our heads. Standard at most venues and surely a no brainer?
By the time Ty creeps into Sabbath territory for the monster riffs of The Feels we're pretty much all done for. A little rest for the mellower strains of Stick Around mean we just about have the energy for an encore of Runaways cover, Cherry Bomb and the fantastic Fanny Dog.
The multi instruments, five different albums to play on the tour, these guys would have had to rehearse about 70 songs for this tour! Truly astounding.
