Deforming Lobes

Album review

Ever since someone got the idea that an album should be more than a bunch of singles put onto a bigger piece of plastic, musicians have faced a particular dilemma: if you've made an ambitious and stylistically eclectic album, how do you make that work when you're playing those songs at your show? 2018's Freedom's Goblin was one of the most expansive and diverse projects of Ty Segall's quite prolific career, but when it came time to hit the road after the album dropped, Segall came up with a simple but effective formula: forget the minutia and rock out big time. 2019's Deforming Lobes was recorded during two January 2018 shows in Los Angeles, and the song list curiously omits any tunes from Freedom's Goblin. What it does deliver is Segall and his band laying into their music as if their lives depended on it. Deforming Lobes documents a tight, heavyweight rock & roll band turning up the amps and wailing hard for the fans, and if it doesn't have a subtle bone in its body, it proves beyond a doubt that Segall and his bandmates are still committed to the sweaty, passionate glory of The Rock Show. On Deforming Lobes, Segall is backed by the Freedom Band, the same core of musicians who helped him make Freedom's Goblin, and they sound like a force to be reckoned with. Emmett Kelly is a great guitar foil for Segall, matching and complementing the noisy majesty of Segall's soloing, Ben Boye's fuzzy keyboards lend force and color to the arrangements, and bassist Mikal Cronin and drummer Charles Moothart hit with the impact of a runaway cement truck. Steve Albini and Greg Norman recorded the concerts, and considering how crushingly loud this seems to have been, they've captured a commendable amount of detail in the final mix, allowing the listener to admire the individual contributions of the musicians as well as the grand spectacle of the ensemble in full flight. Deforming Lobes feels like Ty Segall's answer to the MC5's epochal Kick Out the Jams, and if it lacks that great album's sense of lysergic experimentalism, the Freedom Band's ability to graft garage punk noise onto a sonic onslaught worthy of Blue Cheer more than compensates. Play this one loud -- as if you have a choice -- it's going to be loud no matter how low you set the volume.

© Mark Deming /TiVo