ty segall on choosing the right take, song sequencing and “sketchy vibes”
Are you excited to get Freedom’s Goblin out into the world?
Yeah, very. I kind of sat on it for a long time. We finished it like, I don’t know, must have been eight months ago? So it’s nice it’s finally coming out now. But honestly I try not to listen back [to my albums]. The more you listen, the more you develop a weird, non-realistic relationship to it. It’ll get boring to you, or it’ll feel weird or confusing.
Did you have ideas about what the record would be when you started?
The only idea I had for it was that I wanted it to be as diverse as possible. I honestly wanted to do like a triple LP or something – very far out, abstract, with a 10-minute noise song on it or something. And this is what came out [laughs]. In the end you have to serve the album. It wasn’t appropriate to do that at this time. Really I wanted to make it as free as possible, from any kind of restraints, even self-imposed. I wanted everything to have the possibility of being endless in its interpretation – whether the band wanted to jam on it, or we’d use different instrumentation, or styles of recordings. All of these things were designed to be as open as possible, instead of trying to make the shiniest, nicest record that I could.
you recorded some of the album in lA, some in Memphis, Chicago – what was the timeline for it?
I started writing songs immediately after I finished writing the last record, which would have been March or April of 2016. So there’s definitely like a year and three or four months of songs here. The coolest part for me is that there’s definitely three or four versions of each song. There’s pretty much a version from every studio that I recorded in, and there’s at least a demo, if not two demos, from my house. It was a lot about building these different versions, then deciding how different versions played off each other, and which of these versions suited the album more. There’s another version of “Fanny Dog” – definitely a sketchier one. There’s another great version of “Despoiler Of Cavader”, a super-slick one. It became kinda fun to make these tough decisions. Honestly, there’s probably four other versions of this album that could have existed, and that’s pretty cool.
Will these other takes see the light of day? Might you take any of them out live, for example?
I’m sure I’ll release some on a demos thing or a selections thing at some point. One day, if people are interested in that. It sounds fun to do.
Any other double albums that worked as touchstones?
Oh man, all the great classic double albums – I’m a huge fan of all those. Obviously this is nowhere near any of that shit. But ‘The White Album’ is my favourite album. Electric Ladyland is one of my favourite albums. I love that approach that’s like, “We’re going to get far out here, making this album, because we’ve got the time and we’ve got the space to do it.”
When did “every 1’s A Winner” enter the repertoire?
We just started playing it live, and I recorded it about a year ago. I just decided to try it a couple of ways, and that’s the version I recorded at my house with Steve [Albini]. I have a lot of broken gear, so to make it work, it was really fun and unique.
is Steve a good houseguest?
He’s a great houseguest. He didn’t actually stay at my house, but he turned up with soda pop and a big smile on his face. He was here for a few days and we worked pretty fast – four songs, recorded in four days, and then we did another four songs while on tour at the studio in three or four days.
“Despoiler of Cadaver” is another song that stands out on first listen…
That song came out of me being anti-slickness for a moment. Obsessed with the idea of sketchiness. As stupid as it sounds, getting as freaky as possible. I’ve always loved soul and funk and disco – good disco – so for me, that was my take on a sketchy, sketchy soul-funk-disco-rock song. It came from that phrase – “Despoiler Of Cadaver” – and I took it from there. It’s definitely influenced by Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot
Goin’ On – those sketchy vibes.
There’s a whole lot of brass on the record. is that all Cronin’s work?
There’s like a trio in there, Cronin and other people, and he was arranging. But when there’s just one wailing horn, yeah, that’s Mikal. It was definitely one of the ideas I wanted to get into the record – I didn’t want it to be that stereotypical rock’n’roll guitar record, I wanted there to be other things happening.
How did you know when to stop?
Definitely one thing I realised – and I remember talking to my wife about it – was that I didn’t know how I’d know when I was done. And to be honest it’s not like me to be like that – I’m kinda, “First take, done”, you know? This album is me trying to go the other side. Not trying to make something perfect, but trying to make something open-ended – that has all these different dimensions, that gets far out in its ideas. In that sense, where do you draw the line, where do you stop? But ultimately, the whole point was to leave some blemishes. Some of the versions are very raw, and that’s good.
“This album is me trying to make something that gets far out in its ideas”