PREMIERE: Ty Segall Melts Faces with “Warm Hands” for Pickathon’s Slab Sessions

With the backing of his Freedom Band, the insatiable riffer introduces his caustic anthem to the bright Oregon sun.
PREMIERE: Ty Segall Melts Faces with “Warm Hands” for Pickathon’s Slab Sessions

With the backing of his Freedom Band, the insatiable riffer introduces his caustic anthem to the bright Oregon sun.

Words: Mike LeSuer

photo by Travis Button

December 01, 2017

Over the past few years, Castle Face Records has rolled out some of the most overlooked masterpieces of modern rock in the form of their Live in San Francisco recordings, featuring several of garage punk’s most enthralling performers. The series generally heightens the intensity of already-wilded-out studio material from the likes of Destruction Unit and Thee Oh Sees by placing the listener directly in the subterranean grime of indiscernible feedback, showering sweat, and flailing limbs—a fantasy often eclipsed by the miracles of audio engineering. Each of these songs was written to be played live, recorded by peers who write songs to be played live, and the listening experience is about as chaotic as recorded music gets.

Ty Segall is a repeat offender of the series with his not-entirely-different ensembles Fuzz and Ty Segall Band. Since these performances, he’s channeled this same hellish ethos into traumatizing daytime talk show audiences with his Emotional Muggers and is now throwing down with a new team of familiar faces patriotically identifying as The Freedom Band, notably conjuring up some of the wild energy Segall unleashed on those fateful nights in San Francisco while performing tracks from his (latest) self-titled album released earlier this year.

With an unrivaled Pickathon attendance, Segall’s proves an apt amp for warming the Internet’s ears in the latest installment of Slab Sessions, wherein the LA shredder gifts us with a particularly unhinged performance of “Warm Hands.” Though the only limbs featured in the video are fully engaged in providing the massive soundscape—and swatches of Oregonian greenery detract from the underground aesthetic—The Freedom Band will likely reduce its online audience to Robin Baumgarten’s incredulous mug halfway through the track’s twelve minute runtime.

As always, this episode of the Slab Sessions was produced by the excellent folks at Half Stop Sessions.