If you were to look up the word prolific in the dictionary, you wouldn't see a picture of
Ty Segall there. He'd be way too busy making music to stop long enough to pose for one of those cool old black-and-white illustrations. As if his album-based output over the years spanning 2011 and 2013 weren't enough,
Segall also put out lots of singles, recorded covers, and basically never stopped working.
$ingle$ 2 gathers up a healthy batch of stray songs that were floating around, and it's nice to have them all in one place. The mighty "Spiders" kicks things off with
Segall in full garage sludge mode, with guitars that sound like they're being fed through cement mixers. From there, it goes in all sorts of directions, from the tightly wound cover of
the Groundhogs' classic rocker "Cherry Red" to the acid folk ballad "For Those Who Weep," from a bunch of raucous,
Segall-y rockers like "Hand Glams" and "Mother Lemonade" to a song that sounds like it should have been on the soundtrack of an AIP biker film back in 1967 ("Music for a Film"). The biggest surprise is his sprightly cover of
the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale," which turns the song into a snarling, snaky garage jammer that would have fit in well on a
Back from the Grave compilation. What's not a surprise is that a collection of
Segall's weird one-offs and spare songs is better than most garage noise practitioners' best albums. His castoffs and extras equal other people's gold, and
$ingle$ 2 is worth its weight in trash. ~ Tim Sendra
