Album Review: $ingle$ 2 by Ty Segall

Ty Segall's 2011 singles compilation collected material he recorded and released between 2007 and 2010—25 loose ends from his "scrappy upstart" beginnings. His songs weren't especially complex, but they hit their marks and made an impact. His crazed performances were undeniable. Sure, the recording quality was pretty crummy, but you could say the same of the Oblivians' and Reatards' early records (and Segall's demos stand up alongside Soul Food and Teenage Hate).

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Nowadays, where garage-rock prolificacy is concerned, there are really only two names that consistently live up to their own hefty output (oh, how I wish I could tell you I was about to type “Robert Pollard,” but alas…): Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees-frontman John Dwyer. Both are notorious for their several-albums-a-year workflow and extensive collaborations. On paper, Thee Oh Sees might appear to have Segall beat for “studio” releases, with Dwyer’s shifting trio putting out eight albums since 2008 (to Segall’s seven).

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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.

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Insanely prolific garage rocker Ty Segall could have been forgiven for leaving 2014 with only one record, especially since it was the sublime double LP Manipulator. However, he clearly couldn't break his multi-album-per-year streak, as here we are with $INGLE$ 2, a collection of B-sides and other non-album tracks from 2011-2013. While most of these tunes have been floating around the Internet for the past few years, it's still nice to hear them on an LP that functions as a cohesive record, even if it wasn't designed that way.$INGLE$ 2 oscillates between distorted lo-fi rock and acoustic jangle in a way that's not jarring or confusing, with highlights from both sonic camps.

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The vast majority of tracks on $ingle$ 2 sound like nothing so much as a Kenmore vacuum cleaner. I mean this metaphorically, of course. In the most basic terms these songs sound like cast-off bits of psychedelia and garage rock. Not that they could sound any other way, with titles such as “Mother Lemonade” and “Children of Paul” and “Cherry Red”, titles that suggest Ty Segall might have been flipping through the discount bin and cribbing notes from discarded Electric Prunes albums or trying and failing to imitate the Beatles at their whimsical best.

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