Ty Segall & the Muggers at First Avenue, Minneapolis (09 Mar 2016)

Tour Dates

With only one EP under their belt, they did manage to fit in a few new songs and a cover of Sleater-Kinney’s “The Professional” in their brief 20-min set.

Next up was Los Angeles’ Feels. As much as we love the band, I ‘feel’ their common name will get them in trouble. There are already five other bands sharing the same (or very, very similar) name, including Helsinki based indietronica band Feels and Poland’s successful band Feel.

The punk quartet was mostly women-dominated (with the exception of drummer Michael Rudes) and played most of their songs from their self-titled debut album on Castle Face Records. Vocals were traded between singer/guitarist Laena Geronimo, formerly of the band The Like, and guitarist Shannon Lay. Whenever Lay took over vocals, Feels sounded typically punk… very raw and loud. Geronimo, on the other hand, made Feels sound like something out of an Eastern-punk sound. It’s a good mixture of grrrl punk and psychedelia and garage. Personally speaking, I really love their strange music sound and looking forward to seeing them come back to Minneapolis.

The ever-prolific Ty Segall is back with his latest creation: Ty Segall & the Muggers. With his eighth studio Emotional Mugger, album via Drag City Records, we see Ty Segall at his most experimental and more focused on setting a certain style and theme with the new album.

Before we talk about Ty’s exceptional musical output, we have talk about his all-star supergroup The Muggers. As we previously mentioned, his band consisted of King Tuff’s Kyle Thomas (dressed in an orange jumpsuit), singer/guitarist Mikal Cronin, Cairo Gang’s Emmett Kelly, and Wand’s Cory Hanson and Evan Burrows. With only a few dates on this current tour, the band sounded incredibly tight and well-rehearsed (even when they were improvising on stage).

Ty Segall came on stage in a baby mask, playfully whipping his band with what looks like an umbilical cord. Unfortunately, Ty did not commit to wearing the mask the entire show, instead taking it off for a few songs… and then putting it back on for other songs, etc. I understand that it is probably hot and uncomfortable under a mask, but it felt like he was only half-committed to the strange man-baby performance. Still, visually, it was a lot of fun watching Segall perform.

As you can see from the setlist, they played almost every song from Emotional Mugger, including “Baby Big Man (I Want a Mommy)” and “Squealer Two”. The second half of his set featured some rare older songs like “They Told Me Too” from Twins, “Thank God for Sinners” from Melted, and “Spiders”, a 2011 7” single.

Maybe it was the fact that a fan was stabbed to death at a Feels’ show earlier in that week, but the First Avenue staff was on high alert, watching closely at the rowdy circling mosh pit. As soon as a fight broke out during “Candy Sam”, the staff immediately jumped in and removed a rowdy fan. Then, during “Finger”, which had Ty Segall pointed his finger in the audience, there were more fights that broke out! Ty was surprised and confused, “I just pointed at you, and then you guys got into a fight, that scared the hell out of me.”

Ty Segall and the Muggers’ Emotional Mugger is out now. Knowing Ty Segall’s music career, I can tell you that this all-star band lineup and oddity is probably unique only to this current album release… so if you must check out the strange man-baby performance, you definitely need to see him on this tour.