“I Worship the Dog” is about a rabbit who does exactly that, feeling a kinship with its destroyer, while on “Self Esteem,” Segall explicitly tarnishes the warmth he conjured on “Ice Plant”: “My memories age/My memories change.” Wherever there’s warmth on First Taste, darkness lurks just around the corner.Ty Segall live at The Rialton in Montreal, Ma(photo by Jason Hughes). Opener “Taste” finds Segall shrieking, “Our salivating makes it all taste worse,” a grim depiction of the relationship between desire and fulfillment. That’s not to say First Taste is entirely bathed in the glow of nostalgia. Segall sings like he’s conjuring a memory from the ether as his voice intertwines with that of guest Shannon Lay: “To the oranges that used to be my driveway/And the ice plants that live on the hills.” The album’s first single, “Ice Plant,” gently evokes a powerful sense of belonging and home. The lyrical conceits, then, don’t come immediately to the forefront, but as you spend more time with these songs, Segall’s ideas begin to unfold themselves. His voice, impassioned and vividly expressive, suggests an instrument itself throughout First Taste, a key element of its overall musical texture, with the music and lyrics achieving a powerful synergy. The result is an album that finds Segall expanding his sound while holding onto the blissed-out maximalist streak that has defined his work to date.Īs Segall has matured from a West Coast garage rocker into one of indie rock’s most reliably protean lifers, it’s encouraging to hear that he’s still finding new territory to mine. The instrumentation also features such seldom-heard fare as bouzouki, electric omnichord, and koto. Segall plays all the drums that appear on the left stereo channel of the mix, while longtime collaborator Charles Moothart plays the right-channel percussion. Instead, the album derives its power from a massive synthesizer sound and rhythm section.

Ty Segall’s First Taste is a logical extension of his already-impressive body of work, though the album represents an interesting sonic step forward for the singer-songwriter, as it doesn’t feature any guitar.

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