Ty Segall
Three Bells (Drag City)
Contact Jessica Linker about Ty Segall
Ty Segall returns with his most ambitious, elastic set of songs to date, Three Bells, to be released January 26th via Drag City. Following 2022’s acoustic introspection opus, “Hello, Hi,” Three Bells is a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self, with Ty using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. In conjunction with today’s announcement, Ty unveils the new single/video, “My Room.”
Three Bells is an obsessive quest for expression. With much of the album being played by Ty in conversation with himself, a decision that further elevates the album’s conception, it answers back to the riptide always pulling Ty subconsciously into the depths. Questions we all ask in our own private mirrors are faced down here — and regardless of what the mysterious “Three Bells” mean in the context of the album’s libretto, you can be assured that Ty’s ringing them for himself, and for the rest of us in turn. With all fifteen songs brimming with perspectives, shape-shifting incessantly, Ty pushed them out farther and farther compositionally, challenging the way they’d be played. Each song moves through repetitive, thematic material in its own way, building a claustrophobic/paranoia vibe, cycling bold thrusts forward into ego deaths, the one-step-forward, two-steps- back patterns framing an overriding ask: what can we do to get past the back-and-forth conversation, to arrive at a place of acceptance?
On Three Bells, Ty and Denée Segall collaborated on five of the songs, including the previously released single, “Eggman.” Some of the songs needed the kind of playing Ty couldn’t get alone. Emmett Kelly’s bass parts not only addressed that need, but inspired the way the songs eventually went down. The remaining members of the Freedom Band were called in to play, transforming the material. Co-producer Cooper Crain, who deeply contributed to both Harmonizer and “Hello, Hi”, engineered and mixed most of the album.
With todays’ single, “My Room,” Ty rings the bell of the introvert who is empowered by the world inside his own room. The layers of acoustic and electric guitars dance around each other, quickening the already swinging tempo, while fuzz distortion blows the walls farther back as he takes us deeper. The accompanying music video was directed by longtime collaborators Matt Yoka and Ty, and features Ty steadfastly performing the song on stage as bananas are launched in his direction. He remains resolute in dedication to the craft, only to reveal a surreal dialogue between the dual facets of his own identity.
Three Bells takes Ty Segall’s trips so much deeper and farther than they’ve gone before — a masterpiece of personal expression, expressed through words, music and production, parabolically addressing malaise with compassion in a flowing, unstoppable hour-plus of intoxicating sound. Following the album’s release, Ty will tour throughout North America. Tickets are on sale now.