Ty Segall’s father died late last year. Cancer took him. In
the aftermath, Ty had some sort of serious disagreement with his mother, and he
severed their relationship. In order to maintain some semblance of family, he
moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where his sister lives. The king of
San Francisco garage rock suddenly found himself in a new home away from his
kingdom. To make sense of his new surroundings, his irrevocably altered family
life, and death, he put down his electric guitar and picked up an acoustic one,
on which he wrote exactly ten songs. There were no outtakes.
The result is Sleeper,
Segall’s eleventh album in five years. And after ten albums of fuzz and
feedback and squalling guitars, it’s a testament to his songwriting that not
only did he not lose his identity when he removed all of those factors, he actually
strengthened and stretched that sound in some of the most exciting ways of his
career so far.
