There were ‘No Stage Diving’ signs duct-taped all over the place at the Echoplex last Thursday night, but I wonder why they had even bothered. During Ty Segall’s set, who was playing just before Monotonix, the situation became very soon out of control, and people were crawling on stage and then diving in series, as if it was a Esther Williams movie.
I’m not sure whether it was the perspective to see Monotonix or actually Tegall’s music that was triggering this chaotic debauch, but people were having a fun time. At one point a security guard tried to stop a diver, caught him while he was jumping, and both of them landed on the crowd,… pretty insane.
But Ty Segall, with his young face surrounded by his long blond hair that was making him look like a Californian surfer, was smiling, visibly enjoying the spectacle, and playing non-stop his speedy psychedelic garage rock, channeling a punk Jimi Hendrix …, well the drummer girl, Emily Rose Epstein, was wearing a Black Flag Tee-shirt and Ty Segall have been living in San Francisco for a few years but grew up listening to the Misfits, the Ramones and Minor Threat.
The music is fuzzy but dense, noisy and druggy, and just when I was thinking about this, I swear, an odor of Marijuana came in the air. The sound is swirling around psychedelic curves, at times following a Brian Jonestown Massacre’s path, Segall and his band pushing the distortion but always playing tight, frenetically and freeing a powerful animal. All the songs seemed a mix of several things, old and new, but they all had this visceral temper and great hooks, almost pop driven.
I was in the front and it was becoming more and more difficult to hold my camera straight, as people were pushing hard, and constantly crawling on stage (which explains my chaotic video).
Segall is only 23 or 24 but has already released four albums, and he has described his latest, ‘Melted’, as sounding like ‘cherry cola, snow cones and taffy’… it seems so appetizing, and a proof you can find sweetness among fuzziness.