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Tim Presley’s White Fence And The Aromatherapy Of “Family Perfume”

Posted in Music with tags , , , on April 30, 2012 by johnbuckley100

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.

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Waiting For Ty Segall To Roll Out Of The Garage

Posted in Music with tags , , on April 16, 2012 by johnbuckley100

Do Ty Segall and Kelley Stoltz ever get together over beers and talk shop?  You can kind of imagine the scene — the San Francisco fog coming in on little cat feet, Kelley fresh from his day job in a record store, en route to going home and, without benefit of bandmates, recording a perfect update of Ray Davies-style pop craft; Ty fresh from the studio where, without benefit of bandmates, he’s just recorded a perfect update of Ray Davies “I Can Only Give You Everything” punk rock…  Imagine what would happen if ever they teamed up, with a proper rhythm section?

We are eagerly awaiting the release of Segall’s next album, this one a collaboration with another human being, Tim Presley, under the heading of Ty Segall & White Fence.  Hair is due out on Drag City on the Queen’s birthday, April 23rd.  We wonder if, forced to work with another musician instead of, Prince-like, on his own will force the young genius to add, you know, bridges and choruses to the incredible riffs he’s capable of churning out in songlets at 1:40 in average length.  Segall is one hell of a rock’n’roll guitarist, singer, and (partial) songwriter, as he proved on last year’s gem, Goodbye Bread, as well as 2010’s Melted.  The Kelley Stoltz reference is true to the point that these are San Francisco-based pop historians that can produce incredible records on their own, but it breaks down when you consider that Stoltz is a craftsman carefully working alone in his atelier and Segall is a tyro churning out crude, if exciting fare in his garage.

The fatal flaw in most solo records in which the artiste-as-utility-infielder plays all the positions tends to be the drumming, the lack of swing that comes from not having bandmates to get that first track laid.  From Paul McCartney to Skip Spence to John Fogerty to Paul Westerberg, the underlying and unsatisfying weak spot has been the drumming.  This is one of the remarkable things about what Kelley Stoltz has been able to do — as the sometime drummer in Sonny & The Sunsets, Kelley’s got the drumming covered.  And Segall’s an adequate drummer, we guess.  But one of the reasons why punk rock is so much fun is that musicians who have not mastered their instruments mask it by playing really fast.  With Segall — who has more than mastered guitar — we still have to deal with Black Sabbath meters, when we’re yearning for something with a little more energy.

We’re counting off the days til April 23rd, as it sure will be nice to hear his work leavened by, you know, an additional human or two on bass’n’drums.  Meantime, we’ll just marvel at his prodigious talent and output.

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