Los Angeles – Ty Segall is relentless in his pursuit of covering the great American rock ‘n roll songbook. He has taken on a number of personas and new incarnations that David Bowie himself would have to be impressed with. His solo career got started with simple garage punk on Lemons and Melted, and then he took a stab at the thoughtful psych singer-songwriter genre with Sleeper, and went further into the psych-rock realm with Manipulator. Over the last handful of releases, the only record that was really lacking in a pointed stylistic theme was Twins in 2012 or Goodbye Bread in 2011. With the January 22nd release of Emotional Mugger, the Los Angeles-based musician continues the trend of his last few albums and gets extremely conceptual and weird with it, and the result is another solid addition to his discography.
One of the strengths of Emotional Mugger is its relative brevity. Created by a guy with a wealth of ideas flying around his brain, and who has spent the last year or so collaborating with a broad spectrum of musicians, it’s refreshing to see an album that is relatively free of bloat. Instead, Segall shows some restraint as a songwriter, the songs never meandering too far or allowing a ripping solo to get a bit too face-melting. Instead, the listener is treated to 11 songs that only cross the four-minute mark once – and that is a bit of a technicality: the 5:21 long “Emotional Mugger / Leopard Priestess” is essentially two songs mashed together.
While Manipulator, the 2014 predecessor to Emotional Mugger showcased Segall venturing deeper into the psychedelic rock/pop arena and even experimenting with some Album Oriented Rock touches, this album is an about-face. There is little here that would stand a chance of being played on even the coolest of mainstream alternative rock stations – maybe the straightforward fuzz punk anthem “Diversion.” That being said, there is no shortage of catchy moments throughout the running length of the album. “Squealer Two” has a thumping P-funk bass line and clap-along chorus, “Candy Sam” is vintage MC5-style proto-punk, and “Breakfast Eggs” has a baroque British Invasion quality that is hard to get out of your head.
The centerpiece of the album is the squalling, squealing “Baby Big Man (I Want a Mommy)”. Far from the album’s most pop-oriented selection, it clangs along with guitars jaunting and synthesizers blaring until reaching a simple chorus: “Little baby / big man.” One of the most interesting songs on the album is the penultimate track, “W.U.O.T.W.S”, which features snippets of songs (including “Diversion”) merged together to create a pastiche of a song that is not a far cry from the reviled Beatles cut “Revolution 9” – although Segall’s version of this radio-scanning medley is mercifully only three minutes long, making it a track for which you don’t need to pick up the needle or press the skip button.
All in all, while the aesthetic and style behind Emotional Mugger are new for Ty Segall, the songs themselves are not a far cry from what he was getting at in 2011 with songs like “My Head Explodes” or “You Make the Sun Fry”. In many ways, this is a back-to-basics album for the prolific songwriter, dropping the double-album ambition of Manipulator and concentrating on hard, fast, and catchy rock ‘n roll.
Ty Segall and his backing band, the Muggers are currently out on tour in the United States and Canada. Take a look at the Emotional Mugger tour page for the dates and tickets.
Photo by Denee-Petracek
Matt Matasci
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