Tulip Frenzy

With all the excitement over last week’s release of the gorgeous, epochal, mind-blowing Hair by Ty Segall and Tim Presley (d.b.a. White Fence), who knew that White Fence itself had just three weeks previously scented the air with Family Perfume, Vol. 1?  Things are getting interesting, folks, as for the next few weeks, the Center of the Rock’n’Roll Universe is wherever Messrs. Segall and Presley bring their caravan of strange psychedelica, culled from the grease pits and toolkits of an urban garage.

Just a few weeks ago, your friends at Tulip Frenzy were offering career advice to young Ty Segall that he should find a way to team up with fellow Bay Area solitary studio habitué Kelley Stoltz.  We now realize perhaps how conventional that team might have ended up being — with no insult in the least intended to Mr. Stoltz, whom we hold in high esteem.  Whereas, based not only on his pedigree — Darker My Love, The Strange Boys, The Nerve Agents, just to name a few of the bands Tim Presley’s played in — but also on the sheer sonic weirdness of White Fence, the combo of Segall and Presley is like the two brainiacs at the Mensa Convention who find that one has the Nitrous, the other the Oxide, and laissez les bon temps rouler.

Just as there is more computing power in an iPhone than there was in the Apollo moon shots, there’s probably more studio muscle in Garageband than George Martin had at Abbey Road.  A generation back, Olivia Tremor Control figured out how to produce music as magical as Sgt. Pepper’s with a four track and a bong, but on Family Perfume, Vol. 1, Presley sees them and raises them one by building a psychedelic masterpiece all by his lonesome.  Go listen to “Balance Yr. Heart” followed by “Do You Know Ida Know,” and ask yourself whether if we played them for you, and told you the names of the songs and the album title, and went on to tell you these were lost tapes emanating out of the Elephant 6 basement, you’d give us even a momentary argument.  You know you wouldn’t.  And you haven’t even heard the album yet!

Tim Presley operates like some cosmic rock’n’roll throwback.  His name is Presley, for cryin’ out loud, and according to this very interesting interview in Vancouver’s online Scout Magazine, White Fence operates like something not seen since the heyday of Chuck Berry: three different road bands to back him up, depending on where he is.  There’s an L.A. version, a San Francisco version, and we’re betting it’s the New York version that backs Segall and Presley for this East Coast dates in May (alas, only Portland, ME, and NYC.)

Thank Heaven for cheap technology, because Vol. 2 of Mr. Presley’s aromatherapy is being released in just a few short weeks.  Whatever is happening in the universe in the month of May, there’s nothing we can imagine that will be more exciting than seeing White Fence and Ty Segall get up on a stage together.  A one-man Pixies meets a one-man Alex Chilton-meets-the-Beatles-in-Topanga-Canyon-circa-1967.  The mind boggles.

This entry was posted on April 30, 2012 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Music with tags Family Perfume Vol. 1, Kelley Stoltz, Ty Segall, White Fence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.