It’s a brazen move to open a set before an audience expecting a rock’n’roll show with a brace of space-folk strums. But while audience chatter and the voices of the bar staff occasionally threaten to drown out Californian garage-psychedelicist Ty Segall and sideman Emmett Kelly, the sulphurous magic they conjure on their acoustic guitars can’t be smothered. If a certain wilfulness seems to guide Segall tonight, it’s more than balanced out by how often his haywire impulses strike gold. The haunted Haight-Ashbury madrigals of Good Morning and heavy comedown vibes of Californian Hills are darkly mystical folk, while the Beatles-go-country charm of Orange Color Queen showcases songwriting chops unabashedly immersed in the classics.
Nevertheless, deafening cheers do greet the arrival of Segall’s Freedom Band colleagues, and the plugging in of their amplifiers. However, the primal, concise garage-pop nuggets on which Segall surfed to cult status are mostly absent tonight, replaced by squalling, heavy rock marathons. A power quintet with twin lead guitars, and keyboardist Ben Boye lending a proggy undertow, the Freedom Band play loud and they play long (like their hair). Crucially, they transcend mere 70s revivalism by the gleeful venom with which they attack these songs, and the way the restlessly inventive Segall laces even the gnarliest of riff-outs with pop stardust. While a couple of the sludgier tunes might aim for gold but score only grunge, the lysergic biker-rock of Hello, Hi is transformed into glorious powerpop by its acid harmonies and McCartney-esque flourishes, while Alta’s languid swing between spaced-out Grateful Dead jamming and colossal, slow-building crescendos lends it a cosmic, epic vibe.
Segall returns for a solo acoustic encore of My Lady’s on Fire, only this time the voices that earlier threatened to drown him out are now singing along with him. Moments later, a sprawling, climactic jam of Floydian psych-rock improbably morphs into early Segall fave Girlfriend, like a Magic Eye poster finally coming into focus. It’s an audacious closing flourish, but clearly that’s just how this wildling rolls, forever ricocheting between gnarly guitar solo excess and splitting the heavy-rock atom with perfect pop.
