Ty Segall came up through the late-’00s West Coast garage-psych scene that also gave us the Oh Sees, The Intelligence, White Fence, and more. For a while, he was matching those artists’ output with a constant barrage of albums, including solo releases and through his various side projects. These days, 17 years since releasing his debut album, Ty is slowing down a little. He’s married, has a kid, and moved his Harmonizer studio to the family’s new home near Pasadena. Possession is Ty’s 17th solo album, depending on how you count — and his most immediate yet.
“I think this one was me trying to make a pop record,” Ty says, speaking via Zoom from his porch after an early Saturday morning hang with his young daughter. “My version of that is not what people would probably call pop nowadays, but yeah. I was trying to do all pop jams. No outness.”
Written primarily on piano and featuring string and horn arrangements by longtime collaborator Mikal Cronin, Possession is inspired by classic ’60s and ’70s rock, referencing everything from The Beatles and The Kinks to Bowie, T. Rex, and the Allman Brothers Band. The album also had Ty collaborating on lyrics, teaming with filmmaker and old friend Matt Yoka, who has directed most of his music videos. “I threw the whole kitchen sink at this one,” Ty says. If you’ve ever felt intimidated by the sheer volume of his releases, Possession is not only a great album but a perfect place to start — it’s easy to get weird as you spread out from there.
Ty and I talked over Zoom one Saturday morning in early May. Topics included how writing on piano informed the songs on Possession, his definition of pop, taking more time on albums these days, his upcoming tour with Primus, his Pet Portraits side hustle, California songs as a genre, the LA RECOVERS fire relief compilation he spearheaded, and lots more.
Read our conversation below…
Have you been up for long? I feel like I’m calling early for a Saturday on the West Coast, but you do have a kid who gets you up.
Yeah, I have been up with the kiddo drawing. I drew a giant spider for my daughter today, she drew some flowers. She’s really into saying things are big, fat and giant, so we’ve been drawing big, fat, giant Fannys and Hermans, which are our dogs, so it’s very fun.
How old’s your daughter?
She’s almost two.
Almost to that terrible stage. I hear.
I hear too. But we’ll see.
OK, let’s talk about the new album. Do you have a concept with each record that you have in mind before you start, or do you just write songs and then put them in different “boxes”?
I think it’s kind of different for each one, but for instance, Love Rudiments was the drum record, and that was the concept of it. For a lot of the records, I’ll write a song or two or three, and then a concept will come out of that. Some of them, the process is the concept, and then you distill that even more. So for this one, writing with Matt Yoka was like, “Okay, we’re going to write the lyrics together and they’re going to be stories.” So that kind of became the foundation, and then from there, we sculpted the concept from that.”
Were there musical touchstones for this one?
I just wanted to make it grand, and I hate to use the word “classic,” but that’s all that kind of comes to mind. I wanted to use the colors and the tools and the sounds that I would consider are classic touchstones from an early ’70s or ’60s kind of storytelling rock and roll album, and I wanted to make it cinematic. So I think sometimes the use of strings and horns can be a bit too heavy handed, but when it’s done well, it’s cool. There’s a reason there’s orchestration and score for films. That stuff pushes you emotionally to a desired place, so I wanted to do that. Not too much. I wanted to walk the line. I think too much of that can be cheesy.
It really sounds like you were going for it on this record, both the production, but also the songwriting. These are all some of your most immediate sounding songs in a while. It’s like all singles.
I think this one was me trying to make a pop record. My version of that is not what people would probably call pop nowadays, but yeah. I was trying to do all pop jams. No outness on this one, probably.
I remember when we talked for Harmonizer four years ago, you called that record “airtight.” Do you have a single word descriptor for Possession?
I don’t know. I guess “grand,” maybe, or “lush.” I don’t know if I have a single word, but yeah, I threw the whole kitchen sink at this one pretty much. Maybe just “big.”
You mentioned that you worked with Matt Yoka, who’s directed a lot of your videos, on the lyrics to this album. How did that come about?
Well, I’ve known Matt for almost 20 years now, which is pretty crazy, and we’ve worked a lot together making music videos, and I did the score for his documentary, so we always have worked in a visuals-meet-music kind of a way. He’s a great screenwriter, a great writer, and I just was thinking I wanted to make story songs. So I felt like working with a non-musician that was more of a storyteller would be a cool move like Desire when Dylan worked with that playwright, Jacques Levy. It’s cool when people work with non-musicians. Maybe they’re just lyricists. Maybe they’re storytellers. I think it’s a cool meeting place because I always frame my words in a musical way, and Matt had no experience doing that, so it was an interesting way to go about it.
There’s a lot of piano and electric piano on this record. Is that how you wrote it?
A lot of it. I’d say probably the majority, 60-70% of it. I don’t know how to play the piano still — I was taking piano lessons for a minute, and that helped me kind of get into some writing. It’s still very basic stuff, but when you’re so familiar with one instrument, the guitar, for me, you kind of know where all the chords are, what they do, and what the relationships do musically. So it’s getting more and more rare that you find a surprising combination. It’s all familiar territory. On the piano, I don’t know what I’m doing at all. I don’t know what the relationships are, so it could be a really simple change that on the guitar I would never commit to because I’m like, I’ve done that a bunch of times, but on the piano, I don’t realize I’m doing it. It just sounds good to me, so it kinda lets me write some more simple parts that I probably wouldn’t have let myself write on the guitar.
Playing a new instrument can unlock things that you wouldn’t have done before because on a guitar, your hands just go in normal patterns or whatever.
I mean the piano is just so cool. No wonder it’s what it is. It’s the most incredible instrument. I need to learn more.
As you were saying about the string and brass arrangements, it’s a big part of Possession and I think they’re terrific. Mikal Cronin really outdid himself. Not over-the-top — “Alive” is about as wild as it gets.
The idea for that one, shout out to Mikal Cronin for doing the arrangements, by the way, but that one’s cool because that was just a guitar song, and then instead of having electric guitar, we replaced it with strings, which seems like it wouldn’t be that complicated, but it was. So yeah, that was a journey, but I love how that one turned out. It’s pretty far out.
Did you give Mikal a lot of direction on his arrangements, or did you let him go nuts?
Yeah, I’d say that I gave him a lot of parts. I knew what I wanted. I gave him a lot of parts, and I wrote a lot of the parts, and then there were definitely some things where I was like, just go wild. And so I’d say we collaborated in that sense, for sure. A couple of the coolest parts though, he came up with.
Can you give an example of that?
In “Shoplifter,” there’s a syncopated rhythm where it goes “dun dun dun dun dun [goes on to imitate it as it gets faster], that was him. I was like, that’s amazing. So Mikal, yeah, he knows what he is doing, so coming to him with ideas, and I love with collaborators leaving it open-ended, I want them to bring what they do. I don’t think it’s a good for me to be like, “it has to be this way. This is what I want. You can’t do anything else.” I would just learn to do it myself. Mikal’s ideas are amazing, he did an amazing job.
Like Matt, you’ve known Mikal for 20 years, if not longer, and played with him for most of that time, so I imagine there’s some telepathy at this point between you two.
Totally. Mikal knows what I’m into. We both share a love for the kind of slightly more weirdo section of old school pop music, so we have a shared language when it comes to making that stuff.
Do you have a song on the album that’s your favorite or that you’re most proud of how it came out?
I like “Hotel” a lot. That one’s cool. It’s just very different, and it’s very string forward, and that one just sounds unique to me. But I think “Shoplifter” is pretty cool too. I don’t know, I’m pretty deep in it now. I’m pretty close to all the songs. I also like “Alive” for how wild it is with the strings. I don’t know. That’s a hard one.
How long ago did you record this?
We finished it maybe eight months ago, nine months ago or something like that. It was a little too close to the last record, so we waited, well, we had to do the art and get it mastered and all that stuff, but waited three or four months before we solidified the release date.
Have you done any full band plays of any of the songs off the record yet?
Nope.
Have you figured out what the band is going to be for the full band stuff?
Yeah, it’s my band. It’s the same band I’ve been playing with for a long time, so it’s Emmett Kelly and Mikal and Ben Boye and Evan Burroughs. We’re not going to do any strings.
Oh. I was wondering…
I mean, we might do something like that for a show or two, but turning my band into an eight or nine piece group with the way money is now, it doesn’t work. It’s hard enough as it is to make money touring now.
Will Mikal at least play saxophone, or…
No, he’ll just be the bass player. I don’t think there’ll be any horns or strings or anything. We’ll just make it more ripping loud.
Speaking of playing live, you’re on tour with Primus this summer. Am I right that this is this the first major support thing that you’ve done?
Yeah. This is the first one.
How did that come about?
Well, they’ve asked us a handful of times and we were never able to do it. And then this summer, we just had it. We were just all free, and we were like, hell yeah, let’s go. It’s going to be cool. The biggest places we’ve ever played. Well, I think there’s some freaky enough stuff we can play for the Primus Heads. We’ll get weird.
As you say that, are you taking the Primus crowd into consideration, or will you just play what you want to play?
I wonder. I don’t know. I feel like maybe we should play the wild, weird stuff, but maybe not. I think we’ll probably switch it up every night. I don’t know how long our set’s supposed to be, so it’s definitely not our normal set length, which is like an hour 20. It’ll probably be 45 minutes, so we’ll be able to switch it up a lot.
Are Primus an influence for you?
I mean, who doesn’t love “My Name is Mud.” You know what I mean? Sure, I got into that stuff when I was a kid.
Did you consider trying out to be Primus’ new drummer?
No. There’s no way I could ever play drums like that. I’m not that good of a drummer.
Like you said, these are some of the biggest places you’ll have ever played. One of those is Red Rocks, and this is your first time at Red Rocks, right? I know that it seems to be a bucket list venue for a lot of musicians. Was it for you, or were you jazzed to learn that you were playing there?
Totally, yeah. I mean, the coolest spots for me are Red Rocks and the Greek in LA. I live in LA and that’s just a legendary spot in town, so pretty cool. There’s lots of great places to play in the States, but those are in the top five for sure. So that’s pretty cool.
Yeah. Any other bucket list venues that you haven’t checked off yet?
Hollywood Bowl would be pretty cool, but that is never going to happen. I mean, all those spots are just never going to happen, so
Never say never.
I mean, I can say never. That’s never going to happen, Hollywood Bowl. I don’t know. It’s like I’ve played a lot of places that were important to me as a kid. They’re not necessarily big places, so yeah, it’s cool. I’ve never played The Palladium in LA, but it’s too big for me to play, so I would have to open up for someone. There’s lots of places like that that are important places when I was a kid to me.
The album ends with “Another California Song.” The title nods to this, that California has to be one of the top places that there have been tons and tons of songs about. Not to put you on the spot here, but do you have any favorite California songs that you can think of off the top of your head?
Like every Beach Boys song? Yeah, there’s too many. There’s just too many. That’s the thing. “LA Woman” is pretty good. There’s a Neil Young song on, damn, what’s that record called? It’s that live record that he did right after Harvest. It’s all songs unique to that record. There’s a song called “LA” on there. That’s really good. There’s too many.
Speaking of LA, you spearheaded that LA Recovers compilation that benefits LA fire relief.
Just living in town, you have to do something, and I think the coolest part about it is that all of the compilations that I’ve seen, they’re all digital and streaming. I think that’s great because your overhead’s low, you don’t have to make a product, you just put it out there, money’s in your hand, boom. But I thought it would be cool to make a product, so we are actually pressing a physical LP and it won’t be on streaming, so it’s unique. And yeah, everybody drew names out of a hat to cover each other, which is fun and different. Everybody’s take on everybody else’s songs is really, really cool. We’re excited to see how much we can raise.
You said you pulled names out of the hat. Did they have songs attached to it, or did you let people choose whatever song?
No, you could choose. I didn’t want to make it too restrictive. I got Charles [Moothart] out of the hat, which was cool. So I spent about a week listening to every Charles song. No one knew who got them.
Secret Santa style.
Yeah. Until everyone was done, and then I got it mastered and then I sent it to everybody. It was fun.
Is there a song on there that is your favorite that’s going to blow people’s minds or anything like that?
I don’t think it’s fair to say.
Okay. You live in Topanga Canyon, right?
Actually, I live in South Pasadena now but the fire got really, really close. No, we still had our house there. It was about as close as it could get. Pretty crazy. But everybody in my neighborhood was good. I mean, yeah, I know people that lost their houses and it’s terrible. But LA rules and people come together to help out and do what they can. It’s a great place and the communities that I’m a part of are amazing, and they love to help.
I like the cover art especially. I think it’s really well done.
Cool. Denée did that, my wife.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah, it’s kind of a bit of a nod to, there’s this label Dangerhouse from LA, this late-’70s punk label. It’s great if you’re into punk, X did their first single for it, and lots of cool LA bands. There are these comps called Dangerhouse Volume One and Two comps are really great, but there’s an out-of-print, kind of weird, rare Dangerhouse comp, and that’s kind of a nod to it, too.
So by my count, you’ve released with Possession, that’s about four records in the last year and a half. Am I right?
Three. Three Bells was a year and a half ago. And then in between that and Possession is the drum record.
What about Freckle.
Oh, okay. Freckle. But that’s a band, so that doesn’t count.
Well I meant things that you’re on that where you were central to its making.
Sure. Right, yeah.
Yeah. Do you have the next record already mapped out or even recorded?
Nope.
Nothing?
Nothing. I’m trying to write some stuff, but yeah, I kind of dumped everything into the Possession record, and it’s the kind of thing where now I think, back in the day I would do, it was kind of more flowing into the next record. But since Three Bells, it feels like when I set out to make a record, I take more time, it’s more thoughtful than it used to be. So no, I don’t think there’ll be another record of mine for over a year, probably.
You said you’re near Pasadena now. Is your studio still in Topanga…
Nope. Nope, we don’t have that house anymore. So I moved it all to this house. Yeah, so it’s smaller, more of a just me kind of operation here. I can’t really do bands anymore, but it sounds cool. The room sounds great. It’s more dead.
Where did you record the strings and brass for the album?
That was all at the old studio.We moved right after I finished the record.
You mentioned right at the start of our conversation that you spent the morning drawing stuff with your daughter. You did Pet Portraits last year, and those seemed really cool. Do you have any plans to do more of those?
Yeah, I think I like to do those right before the holiday kind of break, so I’ll probably do them in November. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to be a good time of the year to do ’em.
How many submissions did you get the last time you sent out the call?
Well, I sold 40, which is pretty cool. So it seems like that’s the max I can do.
Right. How quick of a painter are you?
I’m pretty fast. One of those takes me about two hours.
Is there anything else we should know?
Let’s all just be nice to each other, you know what I mean? I don’t know. Let’s all be nice. That’s it, and I’ll see you in the pit for “My Name is Mud.”
