Labour market economists continue to ponder the dark statistical magic of productivity statistics. What is the true measure of productivity and how is it calibrated? Editors of certain national newspapers obsess about the influence of industrial relations policy; the organised labour movement counters with sociological arguments. And nevaer the twain shall be reached.
And then there’s an artist like Ty Segall, whose empirical involvement in the contemporary industrial relations debate is about as relevant as organic tofu production to the Kilburn Motorcycle and Tattoo Football Club’s end of season footy trip. But there’s no doubting Segall’s productivity: like Jay Reatard, Segall can’t help churning garage rock out of the highest calibre through sheer weight of natural ability.
Segall’s latest record, Twins, continues the basic formula: dirty three-chord garage tracks infused with a psychedelic haze, topped off with Segall’s disenfranchised urban youth attitude. Thank God For Sinners is Segall’s tribute to the creativity within rebellion and You’re The Doctor is garage-rock in its glorious freaked out guise. Inside Your Heart is a Beatles-esque romantic lament, the precision of its inner-reflection cluttered with the self-justification and fuzziness that comes with drinking your regrets into submission.
On The Hill Segall starts out in suburban church choir mode; within moments he’s discarded the proverbial cassock and has embraced the flock of San Francisco garage punk. Would You Be Love is punk rock in the true Washington State sense of the term, Ghost lurches and lumbers like an acid freak trying to escape the clutches of cerebral confusion and They Told Me takes a rhetorical axe and a grinding SST guitar to the specious discourse of allegedly normal society.
And there’s no letting up. Love Fuzz is the anthem for anyone who’s professed love while drenched in acid, Who Are You is the bubblegum acid rock track that The Banana Splits always wanted and the droning nihilism of There Is No Tomorrow grinds cheap futuristic images into pathetic submission. It’s all good, and Judith Sloan doesn’t have a clue how to explain it.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: The Hill
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: THEE OH SEES, THE STANDELLS
In A Word: Garage
