Ty Segall

First Taste

First Taste is scatterbrained and self-indulgent, no doubt. But that’s also what makes it such heady fun.

The album expands the singer’s sound while holding onto the maximalist streak that makes his work so compelling.

First Taste is the perfect culmination of all that Segall has learned, lived, tried and tested over this past decade.

On his first studio album in 18 months, the prolific rocker and his collaborators introduce a range of unexpected instrumentation and more detailed production, to thrilling results.

Distorted vocals, funky, jerky guitars, walls of drumming and banks of harmonies dissolve into sad pianos (sometimes) on Segall’s fantastic 13th solo effort.

The prolific Ty Segall returns with First Taste, his first album in a while with a unified sonic vision.

First Taste ... adds a music shop’s worth of exotic instrumentation and double drummers to this Californian’s driving, sprawling oeuvre.

Ultimately, First Taste exemplifies Ty Segall’s shape-shifting qualities. Here is a man who delights in trying on many a mask, restless and impulsive.

First Taste is an album that demands attention, but even if you look away for a moment, Segall keeps rocking on regardless.

Temporarily abandoning the guitar, the prolific garage rocker channels his indulgences and comes away with an unusually focused album.

‘First Taste’ finds the creative polymath forge ahead with his own brand of fuzzy garage rock, whilst broadening his sonic palette further once more, be expanding into sounds closer to psyche-rock, jazz and glam.

Whether this is your first or 20th taste of Segall, his latest is often thrilling, never boring and yes, a lot of fun.

At a time when too many people are questioning if rock & roll is alive at all, Segall is doing the work of four or five people in keeping it healthy, and First Taste is ample evidence that he's nowhere close to being done, which is good news indeed.