Time To Ty One On

Ty Segall
Album: Lemons
Song: It

There's a shitload of excellent garage rockers out there right now, paying homage not only to the 60s icons but also to the 80s revivalists.  I've already touched on the populist side of the movement with Cage the Elephant; Ty Segall resides on the opposite -- and by any account more faithful -- end of the garage punk spectrum: he's lo-fi and proud of it.

Ty Segall began his music career as a one man band.  Seriously.  Like, he'd play the high-hat with his fist and kind of whack the guitar strings whenever possible during the verses, then switch to guitar with hi-hat foot pedal keeping the beat during the choruses.  It's way more successful than I've just made it sound.  Take a gander at this.  Pretty cool, huh?  His arrangements kept getting more and more ambitious, however, and soon he was forced to branch out with a three-piece band.  They kick major fucking ass live, and in the best garage rock tradition steal from just about everyone (five rock god points to whoever spots the Pearl Jam reference):



Songs like this make me unaccountably happy.  Not a hint of virtuosity anywhere.  Guitar, bass, and drums lines so easy a novice could play them.  Hell even I could play them.  But there's something about this sort of straight ahead and strictly for the love of it rock'n'roll that gets my heart pumping.  The energy is infectious. Go Ty, go.