Ty Segall Surfing the New Beach-Pop Wave
"Why did the lifeguard not save the hippie?" rocker Ty Segall asks in his best stoner voice at a recent gig in Toronto. "'He was too far out."
Then the band broke into a grunge-y hook and the crowd erupted into a sweaty mosh, as if Segall's corny joke -- or maybe just his relaxed beach vibe -- gave the too-cool club patrons permission to let their guard down.
Based out of San Francisco, Segall isn't the only musician to cite the beach recently. A slew of indie bands like Real Estate, Best Coast, and Wavves with his hit album 'King of the Beach', are combining their love for the beach and '60s rock with reverb-heavy production.
"There's a total lo-fi beach-pop thing going on," Segall tells Spinner. "But it's coming from everywhere. And that's cool you know, because everyone listens to the Beach Boys."
Segall -- who released his third fuzz-filled psych-garage album, 'Melted,' this spring and will be performing at Halifax Pop Explosion Wednesday (Oct. 20) -- may only be in his early 20s, but as a student of media studies and a music history buff, he knows trends aren't simple in a post-modern world.
"There's been so many years of surf bands, beach bands, and '60s/'70s pop bands, and even '90s pop bands have been influenced by them; it's a big hodgepodge. I don't think I'm into the same stuff Best Coast is, maybe a little bit. There are a lot of people sharing a couple of influences, but we have a lot of differences too."
The Kinks-loving singer-guitarist's sound is a lot harsher than his predecessors and while the Beach Boys might have been all about girls, Segall had a
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