Possession

At this point in his increasingly eclectic career, it seems preposterous to call Ty Segall a garage-rocker, the label that’s stuck to him ever since he blasted out of Laguna Beach in a flurry of fuzz and feedback back in the late 2000s. And while the 10-song/40-minute format of *Possession* may position it as a leaner counterpoint to 2024’s sprawling prog-folk-jazz odyssey *Three Bells*, its compact package belies the amount of structural complexity, textural detail, and melodic ingenuity that Segall crams into each of these tunes. It’s a record built on familiar reference points—acoustic Zeppelin riffs, Bowie/T. Rex pageantry, Plastic Ono Band groove—that’s always taking you to unexpected places, as songs like the strings-’n’-sax-swirled “Shoplifter” and the funky-glam workout “Fantastic Tomb” cycle through multiple sections and accrue more power each step of the way. But even as he plunders the history of British rock with surgical precision, Segall remains an unkempt West Coast punk at heart: He signs off with “Another California Song,” an acerbic Golden State anthem infused with equal amounts of California dreaming and dreading.

Wrapping up a run of mercurial stylistic gambits, the So Cal garage rocker settles into back-to-basics psych and stadium rock on a record packed with feel-good anthems.

Possession by Ty Segall album review by David Saxum for Northern Transmissions. The artist's SIxteenth album is out via Drag City and DSPs