Photos and words by Rosi Lamela
Ty Segall is one of my favorite artists. He’s an extremely talented musician that plays various instruments, is a great songwriter, and is even a producer. It seems like all he does is music as he’s a member of various bands including his solo work. If you have never heard any of his music, you need to go through his discography and hunt down his many projects as there is an array of different styles. I became more familiar with his ‘heavy’ or ‘louder’ music. Spotify put him in my mix after I discovered bands like Oh Sees and King Tuff. Even though some of the harder stuff is my preference, it’s been nearly impossible to find anything of his that I don’t like. I am very drawn to his classic sound that is sometimes defined as psychedelic garage punk.
Ty Segall headlined Brooklyn Steel on Saturday, 6/25 with Shannon Lay who’s been featured in Segall’s Freedom Band. Lay performed a solo acoustic set that brought silence to the crowd. Her classical guitar and finger picking style had me staring at her hands for the duration of her set – it was impressive. Segall started out with an acoustic set and played 4 songs including “Waxman” from his 2021 release Harmonizer and one of his latest singles “Hello, Hi”. The crowd cheered on and you can feel the anticipation for the show to get just a little louder. The set was full of noise and squealing distortion pedals that disguised songs and you could hear people shouting the names of songs or guessing what was next. The crowd surfing and pit got going and I was lucky to be safe and sound on the balcony.
Segall played “Fanny Dog”, and “Alta” from one of my favorite albums Freedom’s Goblin and some older tunes like “They Told Me Too” and “You Make The Sun Fry”. There were quite a few songs I didn’t recognize, but that’s only because there’s so much of his music out there I can’t keep up. Every time I get through another album he releases a new one. The highlight of the night was when Segall came out for an encore and played “My Lady’s On Fire” (stream studio version from Freedom’s Goblin below). The audience stopped crowd surfing and sang along. It was a full display of Segall’s ability to shift gears and it was a honor to be there for it.
Ty Segall’s latest LP Hello, Hi will be released on July 22nd – check out the title track lyric video below. You can see all of his upcoming tour dates here and keep scrolling below to see more photos from the show.
