Ty Segall - Three Bells Review

Three Bells is Ty Segall’s strongest effort to date, despite being so far into his career at this point.

Ty Segall is one of those artists that has been on my radar for a long time, with some individual tracks really standing out over the years, such as “Finger”, from his 2010 album “Melted”, and “The Singer”, from 2014’s “Manipulator”. However, beyond this, I’ve always found his sizeable back catalogue, with Three Bells being his 15th studio album since his self-titled debut in 2008, to be quite daunting. Particularly, this is because, to this point, it’s hard to pick out an album that stands out above the rest as a starting point.

Having said that, the single “My Room”, released in advance of this album, instantly grabbed my attention – while still having the guitar fuzz that covers all of Segall’s work, it’s much more structured than anything of his I’d come across before, and much catchier too. There’s a feeling that the guitar is singing at the top of its range as they build to a busy crescendo which is neatly brought back, while Segall sings of struggling to leave the comfort of his room. This track, I’d say, is Ty Segall at his catchiest, and is probably his strongest tune to date.

The album itself continues this trend, with a cleaner-but-still-distinctly-fuzzy production that finds a more comfortable balance than on previous releases, giving a bit more dynamism and allowing each of the instruments a bit more space to breathe. The opener, “The Bell”, shows this from the start, as the track takes us through different passages with different time signatures, with the drums, bass, and guitar taking turns to come to the forefront. While

Clocking in at 1 hour and 6 minutes, Three Bells is, undoubtedly, a long album, which ideally could have done with some shaving to keep the full runtime. “Hi Dee Dee”, in particular, could have been left on the cutting room floor – it holds up the momentum as the album is getting going, and the screeching guitars struggle to find a strong melody, and to me end up coming across as quite annoying.

Stylistically, the first half of Three Bells seems to borrow a fair bit from the Queens of the Stone Age sonic palette, with riffy and catchy tunes – it might be a stretch, but to me “I Hear” has something to it reminiscent of “3’s and 7’s”. The latter half, meanwhile, is somewhat more experimentally indulgent, with “Denée”, largely for its drumming, and “To You” being standouts.

Cleaner without losing some of the psych rock fuzz, there’s more of a professionalism to this record which helps each track to stick the landing, but some indulgence in the songwriting keeps it clear that Segall and his collaborators were having a lot of fun with this album. Largely, it’s this balance that helps Three Bells to be Ty Segall’s strongest effort to date, despite being so far into his career at this point.