Review Summary: Simulacra, take n..
Another few months have now passed, and like death, taxes and Trump tweets, new Ty Segall releases continue to persist as constants in life. His latest,
Fried Shallots, a benefit release of scattered outtakes serves to further affirm Segall as a tremendous talent mired in unfiltered mediocrity to a point where the oft mentioned ‘tremendous’ aspect of it is starting to wear to a bitty sooty stub.
The songs, plucked from various points of his short and prolific career could be superimposed into just about any of Segall’s releases without usurping the highlights or salvaging the main offenders. And that’s probably the main hitch of
Shallots. Garage is in its umpteenth stages of revival, and like other reverent apers before him (White Stripes, Black Keys), Segall sounds pristine-faced and harmless, a kid who’ll help you move a couch and then split a joint with you. It may make the music instantly likeable, but doesn’t add much of anything else. The sinister edge of vulgar primitivism that first made garage such a singular presence in underground music is entirely absent. Everything about the EP, like the bulk of his considerable body of work feels like an immaculately put together imitation. The scuzz is dialed up, the vox are distorted, the dissonant drums pound away, in one ear it goes, and splits out the other. He’s got clean-cut charisma running over the brim, but the relentless and routinely underwhelming nature of his music as a cohesive force is starting to make it seem like he was always just a bar-band tourist who lucked into a contract, pumping out more of the same and occasionally stumbling onto a nugget in the midst of homogenized garage stompers, the way a still clock will hit the right hour twice a day.
Purposefully sloppy competence becomes
Shallots. The banjo plucking on “Gulls Turn to Ravens,” the thunderous verses of “Another Hustle,” the synthetic funk on opener “Big Man.” It all goes about its business. The lacquered T.Rex strut of closer “Talkin’” is perhaps the best track here, but even that has been outdone by Segall himself on a past EP of T.Rex covers.
Ultimately, there’s nothing overt to dislike about
Shallots and about as much to love about it. It just is what is. Another humdrum entry into the catalogue of an affable artist bent on testing the boundaries of goodwill.
