Ty Segall is here with a brand new offering, The Mic's Cameron Gibbs takes an in depth look into the complexity of the album...
Three Bells imposes an aura of unreality on the listener, dissociating them from musical normality in subtle and subdued ways that culminate in a fascinating garage rock record. It is not Ty Segall’s weirdest offering - that honour still lies with the scuzzy depravity of Emotional Mugger, a concept album centred around the question 'what if Segall pretended to be an utterly deranged individual?' Nevertheless, combining the acoustic leanings of Hello, Hi with the sonic exploration of
Harmonizer, Three Bells both summarises an exploratory chapter of Segall’s career while also ambushing a hapless listener with a new form of oddness.
The title track opens the album perfectly by establishing absolutely nothing, a puzzling papier-mâché overture of three sections contrasting in tone, pace, and fuzz. On one side of the album are tracks that express Segall’s strength in engaging yet straightforward songwriting, such as the fresh feeling boogie of Hi Dee Dee or the intimate bedroom jamming of My Room. On the other side lies songs full of strange choices that create interesting patterns and textures. Void opens with eery guitar arpeggios made further discomforting by a stunted drum beat, Wait squeezes an extra bar into a typical four-bar structure, and Eggman is addressed to a mindless egg-eating figure, which is strange enough by itself without actually having to describe the song. These two tones sit beside each other rather comfortably and are connected by Segall’s trademark squealing guitars and sublime vocal harmonies.
There are moments where this push for weirdness gets a little ahead of itself, failing to elevate certain tracks beyond a 2-dimensional experience. The depth of Repetition, for example, lies in its title, although is short enough to feel like a harmless scene transition. This brevity would’ve benefited other tracks that lose themselves in meandering riffs deviating from otherwise strong compositions. To You moves along energetically at first, and even moulds into a keys-led chorus that is delightfully DEVO-esque, but the last couple minutes slow down and labour on too long.
Reflections too starts with a floating riff, less psychedelic bliss and more a hypnotic trance, but fails to push its climax into interesting territory. It is in some of these moments the trading between the production style of Harmonizer and Hello, Hi is limiting, as some tracks would favour greater focus on one way or the other. The result is a record that could be chopped down to under an hour, although it never becomes a laborious experience.
With that said other moments of musical wandering work remarkably well. Denée, an ode to Segall’s wife, uses her name as a mantra over a tangle of tricksy ¾ passages, lively piano conversations, and loose but forceful drum breaks. Denée Segall is more than a mere muse for her husband, acting instead as a regular artistic collaborator, and this remains true on Three Bells. Having already put out their second record together as The C.I.A. last year, Denée has credits on 5 of the stronger/weirder songs on the record and designed the album cover and layout. Her vocals add effortless cool to the fluctuating riffs of Watcher, and her fleeting lines in the gentle album closer What Can We Do punctuate the track’s simple message of togetherness and love.
"The fun interplay between high and low registers in the chorus reinforces the joyous relationship between owner and pet, also making it one of the album’s most emotionally pure moments"
You may then think that the prolific husband and wife are each other’s greatest muse – how wrong you are. Continuing in the vein of Fanny Dog, a live staple from 2018s Freedom’s Goblin, Ty and Denée write another excellent song about one of their dogs, Herman the Daschund. My Best Friend is a sweet number built around a stop-start riff that lovingly describes the day-to-day activities of the little creature. Arguably the best song on the record, the fun interplay between high and low registers in the chorus reinforces the joyous relationship between owner and pet, also making it one of the album’s most emotionally pure moments. Lyrics feel more like an afterthought to the music of the album, yet songs like My Best Friend, What Can We Do, and My Room are entirely earnest and show more humanity than any great poetry would.
On Three Bells, Ty Segall delights in the process of songwriting itself, searching for ways to sound fresh after some 15 studio albums and a plethora of singles, side-projects, and shenanigans. While not every experiment works perfectly, it is a promising sign that Segall could push himself in several interesting directions without compromising his qualities as a musician and as an individual.
Cameron Gibbs
Edited by Alice Beard
Official album cover courtesy of Ty Segall, Video courtesy of Ty Segall on Youtube
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