Ty Segall never stops moving forward; if he ever takes a backward glance, it seems, it’s only to discover inspiration in a record bin. This perpetual motion makes the release of “Live” “At” “The” “BBC” noteworthy: An excavation of a June 2016 set, it represents one of the rare times Segall has looked in the rearview mirror.
This isn’t the first official live set from Segall—notably there’s Deformed Lobes, a documentation of a 2018 jaunt with the Freedom Band. Here, he’s backed by his ad hoc band the Muggers for an EP that only lasts 19 minutes; on vinyl, the entire second side is devoted to an etching of Segall decked out in a deformed babyface mask, a look that was his signature circa ’16. Though it’s a slight sprint through its five songs, “Live” “At” “The” “BBC” feels like the purest distillation of Segall’s psychedelic chaos, emphasizing energy over expansive space.
The closing track, a cover of the Doors’ “L.A. Woman,” proves an instructive illustration of this shift. Shorn of the original’s neon noir and trimmed to a tight three and a half minutes, it transforms an overly-familiar classic rock chestnut into grimy garage grunge. It’s an interpretation born of both intent and circumstance: The Muggers had been playing a six-plus minute version of the track on tour, but shortened it here to hit their marks. Or, as Segall explains while introducing the song: “We’ll play three minutes of a really long cover, and then we’ll stop for the news.”
That chatter is an acknowledgement of the realities of a BBC session, which requires a band to fit the radio format and blow through their set in under 20 minutes. By the time the Muggers stopped by Marc Riley’s Radio 6 show that June, about a half-year after the release of Emotional Mugger, they were tight enough to adjust without fuss, channeling the energy of a full-length set into a concentrated dose. Where the Freedom Band sounds heavy and murky on Deformed Lobes, drawing power from its own underwater churn, the Muggers feel on this EP as if they’re racing each other to the home stretch.
It helps that the Muggers are something like a de facto supergroup for Segall’s small scene, anchored by Mikal Cronin on bass and Kyle Thomas (aka King Tuff) on guitar; the band is rounded out by Emmett Kelly, a guitarist from the Cairo Gang, and keyboardist Cory Hanson and drummer Evan Burrows, both from Wand, all of whom played somewhere on Emotional Mugger. Here, Segall abandons all instruments to concentrate on vocals, leaving his session players to gel into a real band. The difference between the original LP and BBC is substantial. On record, the dissonant squawk of “Squealer” feels like thoughts rolling inside a closed mind, while “Breakfast Egg” rides its fuzzed-out riff with a slight sinister grin. In the BBC studio, the Muggers wield these tunes as assault weapons, intensifying the friction between the gnarled guitars and shouted melodies, intent on bludgeoning any listener within earshot.
The Muggers sound particularly intense on “Live” “At” “The” “BBC” due to how they lean into the brevity of the format. They play no slow songs; they spend no time lingering in sepia-toned reflections; they choose to gallop forward to an imaginary finish line. Perhaps that relentlessness would get exhausting over the course of a full LP. But as a brief, breathless EP, it's exhilarating.
