Release Date: Jul 20, 2018
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Drag City
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It seemed preordained that the two giants of West Coast rock'n'roll would work together at some point. In 2012, Ty Segall and Tim Presley were both in the middle of a hot streak. Segall was putting out new music at a clip, oscillating between the low-key garage rock of Goodbye Bread and the obliterating punk wildness of Slaughterhouse. As White Fence, Presley was overflowing with psychedelic pop ideas, putting out over six dozen songs between 2010 and 2013.
Another month, another Ty Segall album. As noted in Paste earlier this year, the king of California psych/garage/punk-rock is arguably THEE most prolific major musician working right now, and the level of quality he achieves across his releases is incredibly high. The guy is quickly putting together an all-timer of a catalog. The newest entry in said catalog is Segall's second collaborative album with veteran Los Angeles psych-pop experimenter White Fence, aka Tim Presley, formerly of The Nerve Agents and Darker My Love, and more recently Cate Le Bon's partner in DRINKS.
The unbridled rock & roll force that is Ty Segall met up for the first time with the warbly psychedelic wanderings of White Fence on 2012's Hair, a fine distillation of the pair's strengths. Segall and White Fence's Tim Presley forged a sound that reined in Segall's sometimes excessive energy and gave life to White Fence's often precious music box renderings of '60s excess. Since they made that record, Segall has gone on to expand his sound into something almost arena-friendly, while Presley has gotten weirder and more unpredictable with his solo work and other projects including DRiNKS with Cate Le Bon.
Psych-rockers Ty Segall and White Fence (aka Tim Presley) make a groovy return with Joy, the follow-up to their 2012 collaboration, Hair. This is the second 2018 release for each artist, both of whom have released separate projects this year: Segall's epic Freedom's Goblin, which showed the singer's multiple musical personalities come together in 19 songs; and the second release from DRINKS (Presley's collaboration with Cate Le Bon), which saw Presley build on the quirky repetition of some of his earlier work. Steeped in dry melodies, Joy is a departure from Hair's sweaty garage rock.
Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS The Lowdown: Six years after their slight-but-satisfying Hair, Bay Area rock demi-god Ty Segall and longtime collaborator Tim Presley (dba White Fence) return with another collaborative album of half-melted psych-rock intent on sending listeners on a high-speed swirl through a very cracked kaleidoscope. The Good: Segall and Presley’s psychedelic bona fides remain in fine standing here; eagle-eared listeners will catch nods to everything from The Who’s rock-opera theatricality (“Body Behavior”) to the Three O’Clock’s Paisley Underground jangles (“A Nod”) and the humid weirdness of the Olivia Tremor Control and other Elephant 6 denizens (“Good Boy”). It’s not all (admittedly well-executed) pastiche, though; closer “My Friend” strips things down for a bittersweet ballad that feels like one of the most fully realized songs on an album full of sketches.
Back in 2012 everyone's favourite prolific Californians Ty Segall and Tim Presley (under the White Fence moniker) collaborated on 'Hair', a disarming record full of twists and turns, and it's fair to say 'Joy' is cut from the same cloth. With 15 tracks, of which some are short interludes, it convincingly, insouciantly veers between poles of petering out fuzz and trebly lucidity, and of woozy major sevenths and raw, garagey momentum, as on 'Good Boy'. On 'Other Way' some pretty funny dog barks segue into one of the album's heaviest and best moments.
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