bReview: Ty Segall
Tuesday 10 March 2026 at the Powerstation
Photography by Isabella Rose Young
Written by Imogene Bedford
I’m running late, sitting on my porch drinking red wine.
The autumnal air is still warm, the bottle’s half-finished, and somewhere in Mt Eden, guitars are about to start howling. I’ve barely been home from work ten minutes before it’s time for us to go. But what is a rock ‘n’ roll gig without some weeknight spontaniety?
By the time our Uber reaches the Powerstation and we tumble out half-cut and giddy, the opener’s first chords have echoed out the doors.
Kitted in leather and speed racer sunglasses, Guitar Wolf looks less like a band and more like a biker gang. The Japanese garage-punk trio have spent decades perfecting the art of careful chaos, tonight playing one of the final shows in their summer tour across Aotearoa.
It’s a maximal rock spectacle unlike anything I’ve experienced before, rollicking in the image of 1950s Elvis. Frontman Seiji is similarly magnetic, ripping through chainsaw riffs with a wolfish grin that belies his total sense of control over the stage.
“Do you know this fish”, he shouts while guitarist Gotz unfurls a poster of some prehistoric looking creature. “Dinosaur fish!” No one does. It doesn’t matter. As the band thrashes through their next song, the microphone stand rocks back and forth on stage like it’s possessed.
(Guitar Wolf / Photo: Isabella Rose Young)
Seiji drags someone on stage from the crowd and has him play guitar, guiding his hand along the fretboard like a gleeful puppet master. He stage dives moments later and the crowd surges forward, beer cascading down my friend’s arm.
The set’s already running nine minutes late as the drums close things out and Seiji’s guitar pick goes flying into the crowd, but time feels mostly theoretical at this point.
Huge industrial fans blow my hair straight back off my face as we head outside. The cliche is unfortunately accurate: there’s something almost electric about the atmosphere. Rainbow lights cast strange shadows across the smokers; my friend texts her on-off spiritual connection situationship to pick us up after the gig. The night is thrumming with possibility.
And inside, the music is only just getting started. It seems fitting this evening’s show, brought together by Strange Universe and Banished, is exactly a week before Brian Jonestown Massacre will play the same venue. Acid-washed fans are clearly out in force, and by the time we slip back through the doors, the room feels noticeably fuller.
Ty Segall stands off to the right of the stage, seemingly never particularly intent upon being the centre of attention at his own show. The garage-rocker opens with Feel, easing the room into slow-burning fuzz, before dropping into the swaggering, outsized Candy Sam.
He is no Jim Morrison, commanding the stage with relaxed confidence instead of broodiness - and is all the better for it. “Thank you, how is everybody going,” he asks, before he tells us it’s drummer Evan Burrows first time in Aotearoa. “Blast from the past, man”, Segall says in his Californian drawl.
Buzzing amps hum as a huge retro guitar riff kicks into Thank God For The Sinners, and I realise it feels like I’ve walked into a 70’s LARP convention. Everywhere I look, someone appears to be dressed like a background character from Everybody Wants Some!!! - flared pants, moustaches, cropped vintage band tees.
“Every time they drop to a lower chord it feels like they’re flirting with me”, my friend says, as the staticky outro of Black Paint bleeds into Buildings. A blue glow washes over the musicians as the guitars stretch into something slow: the room briefly an LSD light show.
Something about Segall’s sound recalls The Beatles after they went to India, swirling and slightly mystical - but without the orientalist exoticism or misogyny. His hypnotic psychedelia is undercut with a lyrical introspection that stops the songs from drifting too far into abstraction.
In fact, he says the “personal” Chrome means a lot to him, and many of his songs imply a sense of psychological unease. On Imaginary Person, he sings “you’re in my head but I am certain you are real”, while on You’re the Doctor, he wonders if “there’s a problem” in his brain.
(Ty Segall / Photo: Isabella Rose Young)
There’s a humility to his performance, a resistance to what would be a well-earnt rock star persona. “Thank you, thank you, thank you”, Segall says after the crowd demands an encore, as if it is at all surprising the room could be left wanting more.
His self-effacing charm puts the focus squarely on the music, despite a catalogue so huge that the ego would be justified. On the melodically almost folky My Lady’s On Fire, Segall really shines, his voice a soft rasp that carries a surprising tenderness. He treats garage rock with such delicate care it’s hard not to become so lost in it the end of his set feels almost startling.
Is there any kind of music that let’s you forget yourself better than rock ’n’ roll? For an hour or two at least, you’re no longer thinking about how shit your job is, or whether you’ll ever afford a house in the city. Just guitars, cheap beer, and the brief but perfect feeling of not thinking about anything at all.
Anything feels possible when you step out of a gig like that. I find some metal scaffolding on the way home and hoist it back to my flat as if I’ve joined the road crew. In the morning, when my flatmate complains, the whole thing feels a bit absurd. But for a moment, leaving the gig, it had seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea.
(Outside of the Powerstation / Photo: Isabella Rose Young)
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