Musician Ty Segall releases new album — ‘a snapshot’ of his Laguna Beach childhood

A brand-new album, a two-month residency at one of the hottest ballrooms in Los Angeles and an upcoming European tour have one Laguna Beach musician feeling like the name of his hometown neighborhood: on Top of the World.

Ty Segall, a singer-songwriter-drummer-guitarist and lead of the current iteration of his ensemble, Freedom Band, drops his latest record, “First Taste,” on Friday.

It’s his 12th studio album, and one rife with references to his Orange County home.

“A lot of the songs on the new record are just kind of flashes of memory — just snapshots,” Segall said. “I have a few songs that are kind of love letters to Laguna or California.”

The 32-year-old musician, now entering the second decade of his career, got his start in the garages of Laguna Beach. In the early days, Segall depended on tolerant neighbors who didn’t ask him to keep his drum practice down — and lenient parents who vouched for him and his friends when the cops came calling at house parties.

“All of the people that supported us were all ... either into music themselves or just loved to be around art and creativity,” Segall said. “It’s really cool when you’re a teenager and there are adults who have the power to shut something down and they don’t because they want kids to be creatives.”

Segall’s high school creative crew became his long-term bandmates. Two friends, Mikal Cronin and Charles Moothart, are part of the current tour that includes stops in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Berlin, London and other European cities.

While Segall now lives in Topanga Canyon, he said he often returns to Laguna Beach to surf or visit his bandmates’ families.

Their shared upbringing appears often in Segall’s music — particularly in the lyrics of “Ice Plant,” a single he released last week.

“Yellow hair ... in the sea” refers to a memory Segall has of his mother swimming. The oranges he sings “used to be [his] driveway” are an ode to the county of the same name.

Even the song’s title refers to the succulents he remembered seeing all over town.

“ ‘Ice Plant’ is very much a snapshot of a specific time in my childhood,” Segall said. “There’s a lot of vegetation and weird cliffs and eucalyptus trees everywhere and sandstone rocks, and it’s just a strong visual presence in my mind of my childhood.”

Segall said the record recalls specific memories from when he was between 8 and 13 years old — “that time when you’re still a child, but you’re an older child; you’re still malleable and you still hold onto certain things with such intensity.”

Local radio show host Corey Brindley has followed Segall’s career since the early days. As a college DJ at Cal State Long Beach in 2014, Brindley often played Segall’s music. He also piped it into Thalia Surf Shop in Laguna, where he worked.

For Brindley, “First Taste” marks another stylistic change in Segall’s history of “really high energy ... heavy rock mixed with garage.”

“It blows my mind how many times he can reinvent himself successfully, where it doesn’t seem like he’s trying,” Brindley said. “It’s pretty organic.”

Moothart, the Freedom Band’s drummer, acknowledged the new album has “an entirely different feel.” The instrumentation is different and the vibe is in “a different realm of experimentation,” he said. After more than a decade playing together, Moothart said the group likes to “keep things interesting.”

Moothart remembered often seeing Segall at Cronin’s house parties, where the musicians would perform with different bands. Segall graduated from Laguna Beach High School in 2005 with a high school songwriter scholarship in hand. Moothart joined his high school band, “Epsilons.” Years later, they reconnected in the San Francisco gig scene.

“Everyone kind of always knew he would make it because he was so determined,” Brindley said, referring to Segall.

Segall, Moothart and Cronin returned to Laguna Beach last year for a brief homecoming tour, hosted by Brindley. He set up an underground-style show at the Sandpiper Lounge, known affectionately in local circles as the “Dirty Bird.” The tickets sold out in a day, Brindley said.

“I grew up, up the street from there, and it’s the most classic Laguna dive bar hang,” Moothart said of that performance. “So, to go back there and play was just a funny, full circle kind of thing ... It just becomes something you feel you have to do at some point.”

Ty Segall and the Freedom Band will play weekly at the Teragram Ballroom, 1234 W. 7th St. in Los Angeles, until the end of September.