New Albums

Including: Ty Segall, Joan As Police Woman, Field Music, Brigid Mae Power, Hookworms

Broadly speaking, you can divide classic albums into one of two categories. There are those albums that set out to nail a definitive sound or concept with clarity and concision. Think: Revolver. The

Queen Is Dead. Nevermind. and then there is that other breed of classic album, the ones that set out to do a bit of anything and everything, and for whom a degree of overreach is hardwired into their design. Think: Tommy. Tusk. The White Album.

In the decade that Ty Segall has been operating as a solo musician, the California native has run along both tracks. There have been albums defined by their laser-focus – think 2012’s Stooges-meets-Hawkwind ripper Slaughterhouse, recorded under the auspices of the Ty Segall Band, or the downbeat acoustic psychedelia of the following year’s Sleeper. But Freedom’s

Goblin is on the other track. Made in five different studios across the US, clocking in at 75 minutes in length, and boasting no concept or defining principle beyond the rather loose idea of freedom itself, it is – to say the least – unwieldy. yet perversely, it also feels like Ty’s finest moment to date. Ten albums in, and in his 30th year on Earth, Ty Segall just keeps getting better.

Perhaps it makes a weird kind of sense that Ty’s most unrestrained album stands among his best. Working in a field, garage rock, that can be prone to an excess of conservatism, Ty is a born disruptor, mixing sweet waltzes with terrific noise, embracing elements of artifice and theatre – the silver lipstick, the Barrett-meets-Bolan croon – and turning out mangled cover versions that dance around the line between tribute and parody. like his friend John dwyer of The oh Sees, Ty is wise to rock history but, crucially, not beholden to it, rather too anarchic and footloose to linger in any one band’s shadow. “Move fast and break things,” was for a while the motto of another California resident, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. If the techies hadn’t got there first, it might have made a suitable catchphrase for Ty. Freedom’s Goblin was recorded in piecemeal fashion, some tracks laid down in Ty’s home studio, others recorded while out on tour with The Freedom Band – long-time collaborators Mikal Cronin on bass and brass and Charles Moothart on drums, along with more recent recruits Emmett Kelly on guitar and Ben Boye on keys. No real attempt is made to smooth its fragments into an end result that feels polished or linear. on the contrary, its wild, ‘White album’-style swerve through