Ty Segall might have been getting ahead of himself last year when he told an interviewer he was trying to slow down. “I love being prolific, but sometimes it lessens the whole thing, I feel like, which isn’t what I would like,” he said. “So, I’m actually trying to not release as much anymore.” Right. Shortly thereafter, the ever-industrious garage rocker gave us Love Rudiments, an LP consisting entirely of percussion instrumentals. It was a logical endpoint for the phase of hermetic experimentation that Segall entered circa 2018, in which each new record tackled a different aesthetic: the unrecognizably deep-fried covers of Fudge Sandwich, the synth-pop dreamscapes of Harmonizer, the basement-dwelling prog-punk of Three Bells.
Now approaching 40, Segall shows no signs of slowing down. But his new album, Possession, suggests that the exploratory period might be coming to a close, at least for now. This is a bit of a back-to-basics record for him, which is to say that it falls somewhere in the matrix of glam-inflected psychedelia that broadly defines his catalogue from Goodbye Bread to the magisterial double LP Freedom’s Goblin. Compared to his earlier albums, though, Possession trends toward a warmer, more openly nostalgic brand of stadium rock, packed with power-pop jams and feel-good anthems.
Much of the levity comes from the broader palette at Segall’s disposal. There’s an almost Steely Dan-ish buoyancy to the horns that blast on many choruses, and a string quartet lends a breezy dignity to a good portion of the songs. On “Possession,” Segall takes what initially sounds like an electro-convulsed “Ziggy Stardust” and slowly refashions it into a brass-driven epic worthy of David Clayton-Thomas era Blood, Sweat & Tears, which might be as far as he has gotten from the stripped-down thrasher rock of his youth. As if to retrace that evolution in real time, “Shoplifter,” a song about a destitute kleptomaniac, begins as a sparse garage dirge and gradually accretes instrumental layers until it climaxes with two saxophones chasing each other’s tails as violins climb into the ether.
Segall co-wrote most of Possession’s lyrics with Matt Yoka, who has directed the bulk of the rocker’s music videos, including the one in which Segall sits motionless at the center of an increasingly rowdy kegger, attempting to sing the plaintive “Goodbye Bread” as half-naked revelers flail and bump into him. The record is populated by similarly poker-faced loners trying to shrug off the absurdity of a world in slow decline. “Smoke in the summer/The metallic taste like rubber,” Segall sings over an ominous, burbling synth line on “Hotel”: “Traffic in the ocean/Help me with the lotion.”
But that airy nonchalance is part of what makes Possession feel like a slightly lower-stakes effort for Segall, as if after all his recent experiments, he was content to simply bask in the glow of his classic-rock records for a while. On “Fantastic Tomb,” he channels Edgar Allan Poe in spinning a gothic tale about being lured into a cellar, but the song’s strutting dad-rock groove sounds like it could be a Grand Funk Railroad B-side, dashed off between stops on Segall’s last tour. “I know you want to sing another California tune/So sing along to another California song,” Segall sings on “Another California Song.” This quintessentially fuzzed-out power-pop anthem might as well be a mission statement for the record. The album is full of familiar moves—but comfortingly so, heralding a return to the California songs that have long made Segall the golden boy of the Golden State’s psychedelic revival.
