Ty Segall, “The Hill”

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If this is 1972, then Ty Segall is the ginger Peter Pan of Prog, the friendly and amicable person bringing this dilute and highly-technical art form to the masses. But this is 2012, forty years beyond, and Ty Segall is not coming from the same entended psyche as the prog masters of before, who took their cues from the endless blues jams of '68 in America and the dainty, wordy tea-time tributes on the English side of the pond. Instead, of course, Mr. Segall has had the punch of garage-punk to the gut, and is taking the two direct influences and molding them into a never-ending series of modern-day rippers.

But you can't help but directly hear the rock of the '70s in this track and others. The intro of “The Hill” is a proclamation of resilience, and it is strangely British-inflected. No word of who the female vocalists are, but since this single, being released on Drag City on September 4, is not being billed as The Ty Segall Band, we can estimate that it's some people we know and some people we don't. But the haughty air is new; previously, when Segall relished references to previous rocks and rolls, he wiggled his way closer to the gentlemen who were the genesis of what we now know as heavy metal. But this is a different direction completely, a Roy Wood kinda place for those of us who just don't have the attention span in this day and age to listen to every act of their Renaissance operas. Thanks for the Cliff's Notes on every genre, Ty. Kids gotta learn!