Ty Segall
Emotional Mugger
(Drag City)
Still only 28, Californian multi-instrumentalist Ty Segall has released eight studio albums and one live album since 2008 alongside numerous EPs, compilations and cassette-only releases. Factor in the various side projects with The Ty Segall Band and others and you get a sense of how endlessly prolific he is.
So far, so garage rock. But Segall's interests go beyond simply churning out more and more songs in the same oeuvre, a sort of spacey, lo-fi punk-metal. Although there's no doubting his musical tools of choice - distorted guitars, double tracked vocals and smart hooks – he throws plenty more into the mix too. On Emotional Mugger it's wonky synthesisers which bleep, belch and flutter in the background of the songs.
There's variety too. Candy Sam is all 1960s-flavoured psychedelia, Mandy Cream is jittery Beefheartian blues-funk and Diversion, a cover of The Equals's 1973 hit, is like The Dickies on cough syrup. On Californian Hills, meanwhile, Segall plunders the feel (and the stuttering tempo) of Black Sabbath's menacing War Pigs. Plunders or parodies? With lines like this - “American nightmare/Guilty generation/Fingers on the pulse/Of their parents' alienation” - it's sometimes hard to tell whether he has his tongue in his cheek throughout. Perhaps, then, it's as playful as it's powerful.
Barry Didcock
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