Ty Segall Brings Raucous Garage Rock Mayhem to Austin (SHOW REVIEW)

Prolific multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ty Segall brought a career-spanning set list to Stubb’s in Austin on Saturday night. Currently touring on his second self-titled album, Ty Segall and The Freedom Band managed to fill up the iconic Austin venue quite nicely. As an added bonus Segall invited some of his friends to open up the show. The Black Angels lead guitarist’s side project, Christian Bland & The Revelators, brought their mix of 60’s garage/psych rock complete with a reverb drenched rendition of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. Longtime collaborator and bandmate of Segall’s band Fuzz, Chad Ubovich joined the lineup a few days prior with his garage rock outfit Meatbodies when it turned out they were playing another show later that night at Austin’s Hotel Vegas.

The show was, predictively, heavy on material from his stylistically-schizophrenic newest album. After starting off the show with a Big Star-esque power pop album opener, “Break A Guitar,” Segall launched right into the acoustic rocker “Freedom”. Before performing a new garage rocker named for his dog, “Fanny,” Segall introduced the song by telling the crowd “This is a new song about my dog…You know my dog.” Another great addition to the set was the latest epic track from his new LP “Warm Hands (Freedom Returned)”, which clocks in at over 10-minutes on the album. The live version easily surpassed the studio version as its multi-part suite of garage-punk, glam-folk and jazz driven jams came close to the fifteen minute mark. Favorites from past LPs made it into the set as well; the fuzzed-out psych rocker “Finger” from 2010’s Melted had many in the crowd going wild and hoping for more from this album. A trio of songs from 2012’s Twins consisting of “You’re The Doctor,” “Love Fuzz” and “Ghost” effectively brought the set to a close with the addition of the garage rocker “Feel” from 2014’s Manipulator that included an outro with snippets from the Grateful Dead’s “Fire On The Mountain” and “Franklin’s Tower”. The real highlight towards the end was “Love Fuzz”,  in which each member of the band stopped playing at different times until only keyboardist Ben Boye was playing his riff from the song for a full two minutes while the rest of the band posed absolutely still before joining back in.

The age range at a Ty Segall show varies from early teens to middle age, and Ty Segall’s prolific catalogue seems to cater to the whole audience. From the high-energy younger crowd moshing in the front to the up-past-their-bedtime adults sitting in the back, Segall’s sets have everyone covered, leaving us all anticipating the band’s likely return to Austin next year.

Photo by Merrick Ales courtesy of Stubb’s BBQ

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