Ty Segall Embraces Hi-Fi Production, While Losing None of His Weirdness on ‘Three Bells’

Photo Credit: Denée Segall

Watching the evolution of an artist you love is one of the most fun things that can happen as a music fan. Sure, it’s cool that AC/DC have made the same album for the past forty years, but it’s more rewarding when you can watch an artist you love evolve, while still retaining the core of what made you fall in love with them in the first place. I personally feel that way with the LA-based Ty Segall, who with his fifteenth solo album Three Bells (not counting countless side projects for bands like Fuzz and The CIA and collaboration albums with artists like White Fence and Mikal Cronin, as otherwise we’d probably be closer to his thirtieth album) has made a genuine classic, 64 minute, ‘70s inspired concept album, with hi-fi production. The DIY punk/garage king, who burst onto the scene as part of San Francisco's scene of the late ‘00s/early ‘10s (with Osees leader John Dwyer serving as his mentor) , who made some of the most lo-fi, abrasive and noisy music around, someone who released so much music that it was seen as a slow year if Ty had only put out one album as opposed to three, has officially grown up.

Don’t think Ty has gotten soft though. The 2010s king of lo-fi noise is now embracing hi-fi production, while losing none of his weirdness. The great comedy writer Robert Smigel (creator of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and TV Funhouse on Saturday Night Live) described his tenure at Saturday Night Live, and why he preferred writing for a broad mainstream comedy show like it as opposed to an HBO sketch show seen by fewer people, is he preferred being the Rebel in a Sweater, as he dubbed it. It’s more subversive to sneak in absurdist and weird comedy sketch ideas on a show that people are tuning in to see the pop star of the moment guest, and I think Ty follows the same thing with Three Bells. This is an album, on the surface, that could stand with some of the ‘70s classic rock albums your dad has in his collection, but if you squint, you can hear the same weirdo genius Ty Segall has always been, with distortion and noise coming when you least expect it.

I talked with Ty Segall on my CJSW radio show What’s Your Niche? and one of the key factors to Three Bells sounding as warm and lived-in as it does is Ty had all of the time in the world to craft it. Part of the reason Ty Segall released music in such a mad dash is because he was just surviving and clawing his way, paying for studio time for his limited funds, and getting in and out making an album. Now that he has brought the studio to his home, Ty (along with co-producer Cooper Crain, of Bitchin Bajas fame) can experiment and play around. He’s not on a deadline either; the 15 songs on Three Bells took multiple different forms before landing on the songs collected here (some of these alt versions are included on a limited edition bundle Drag City Records put out as a pre-release bonus). As Ty Segall described to me, if he had booked a recording studio for the amount of time he spent making Three Bells, it would probably cost 100 thousand dollars. With his home studio, however, it was significantly less than that, and brought the project literally close to home, as the introspective lyrics show. Ty is writing about the most important things in his life on Three Bells: his wife Denee (who co-writes five of the songs on here), and his best friend, dog Mr. Herman (on the appropriately titled “My Best Friend,” maybe the sweetest song Ty Segall has ever made and a relatable song for any animal lover). Ty Segall has said Three Bells is the culmination of his introspective songwriting, and given the subjects present on the album, it makes sense.

Three Bells is a retro sounding album that is not fetishistic. It’s an album made by someone trying to bring the sounds of ‘70s rock and punk to the present, with modern, 21st century songwriting. One of my favourite songs is the song “Move,” which features Denee Segall on lead vocals, and is a collaboration with Ty’s long-time band mates Charles Moothart, Mikal Cronin, and Emmett Kelly. It’s a weirdo blast, full of cash register noises, a sardonic vocal delivery by Denee that would not be out of place on a ‘90s college rock playlist, but done with pristine production. It’s a joy to listen to. The album is very cohesive, with repeated phrases. There might not be a song titled “Three Bells” on the album, but the phrase appears on the first two songs on the album “The Bell” and “Void,” as well as the song “Repetition” having the repeated mantra “ringing, repetition, ringing, ringing,” like if Eckhart Tolle ever released a punk album. The song “Eggman”continues the repetition motif, as the song slows down as Ty says “repetition, again again”, like you are in the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. The album feels like a classic song cycle, an album that demands to be listened to in proper sequence, so you can get every little easter egg, with new pleasures popping up with each new listen. That certainly extends to the final song  “What Can We Do,”  a duet of sorts between Ty and his wife Denee, with lyrics like “after the sun is dead and gone, no one's around except for me and you,” a post-apocalyptic love song for the ages. It is a fitting way to not only close Three Bells but this era of Ty’s introspective songwriting. As a fan of Ty’s for the past fifteen years (going back to when I heard “Girlfriend” from Ty’s third album Melted on The Best Show on WFMU), it has been deeply rewarding following his career. It’s a catalog I put up against any artist from this century, straddling the lines between some of the heaviest and fuzzed out music as well as some of the most beautiful and inward. I cannot wait for Ty Segall’s next chapter, but in the meantime, I will gladly be spinning Three Bells, which when all is said and done, might end up becoming my favourite album of Ty’s to date.

Favourite songs: Void, I Hear, My Best Friend, Move. My Room, Denee, What Can We Do