By its very nature, garage rock can be a trashy, erratic business - inevitable given the unbridled spontaneity it privileges. One of the many amazing things about Ty Segall and the ever-expanding circle of artists around him, however, is how they've found a way of adding consistency to the volatile mix of productivity and excitement.
One of the many privileges and occasional disorientations of working for a monthly music mag is that we hear some music so far ahead of release that it can be easy to forget when the albums actually come out. So while the world of Ty Segall-related projects might have moved on here to the monstrous Wand album (out on Segall's God imprint in late August), it's instructive to remember that Segall's own "Manipulator", which we've had for a while, isn't out 'til then, either.
For all his flailing locks and dazed expression, Ty Segall does not make a particularly convincing slacker. In a short promotional clip for his new album, released on Youtube back in May, he pretends to be asleep in bed, on his couch, in a garden and then, preposterously, up a tree and at the wheel of a moving van.
It’s Record Store Day on Saturday; a kind of weird, but necessary I guess, annual event that’s become a critical point in release schedules. I’ve been going through the lists of releases at recordstoreday.com and thought it might be worth picking out a few things that are worth looking out for.
Increasingly, a fair amount of the day’s business is built on canny catalogue management aimed at collectors (especially vinyl fetishists), and there are a bunch of things here that fall roughly into that sector:
