A Review of Ty Segall’s “Emotional Mugger” (Out January 22, 2016)
Weird and wonderful
There are two things you can say about California’s Ty Segall. One, he’s incredibly prolific, and has been known to release more than just one album a year. Two, he’s kinda weird — or, at least that’s how he presents himself on his latest release, Emotional Mugger. And that’s before you know of the promotional campaign behind it, which included rare promos going out on VHS tape, the emergence of a toll-free hotline number (how’s that for old school?) and press images (not included in this review, just because they were either poorly lit or sort of small) of, apparently, Segall wearing a plastic baby doll’s head — aping a move from Devo, I think. On record — at least, this one — Segall comes off as a lo-fi, weirder cousin of Ariel Pink, and we all know how weird Ariel Pink can be. In fact, Emotional Mugger is a scattershot pastiche of everything from Syd Barrett acid freak-fests to Beatles-esque songwriting to fuzzy and distorted garage guitar workouts and pretty much all points in between. In a way, Emotional Mugger is a kindred spirit to Todd Rundgren’s LSD-damaged 1973 album, A Wizard, A True Star. The only difference is that, while Rundgren’s record was pretty much the main starting point where his ego began to run amok (though some may point to earlier novelty cuts such as “The Viking Song” as that point), Segall seems egoless; yep, while he declares “I’m back” repeatedly on one song, that’s before you realize that he’s singing to an off-screen lover. Still, Emotional Mugger is a harrowing trip into one man’s subconscious. One who maybe spent too much time eating a few too many ‘shrooms in his formative years.
Another thing about Emotional Mugger, for all of its hideous baby doll heads, is that it is entirely innocent sounding — if innocence is something that could be professed by Lurch from The Addams Family. There’s a song here called “Candy Sam” that ends with a chorus of children’s voices, and another in which Segall declares, “Candy, I want your candy” — obviously speaking to an object of his affection, and then throwing what appears to be a sexual euphemism in for good measure. But wait! If that didn’t seem Los Angeles-sleazy enough, elsewhere on the same cut (“Breakfast Eggs”), he professes, “Come to me, little one.” If you’re feeling the creepiness, well, that’s what you get with Emotional Mugger: a mugging of some sort. So, yeah, there’s a sense of the (playfully, I hope) odd on this album, and, at times, it seems as though Segall is channeling the same sort of skewered persona that David Bowie did during his mid-‘70s heyday. In fact, it’s just downright strange timing that this record drops less than two weeks before Bowie did. If there’s a natural heir to the “It’s OK to be strange” philosophy that Bowie adopted, and people loved — nay, adored — him for, Ty Segall might be that individual. That is, if the general public can get past the scuzz of the both the lyrics and sound of the record. Who knows if they will, but one thing that Emotional Mugger seems poised to do is break Segall further into the hipster underground pantheon of indie rock at the very least.
More after this photograph of Ty Segall:
Even the label’s promo distribution strategy is meant to keep the demand of pre-release pirated copies to a minimum, out of adoring hipsters’ hands. The only press copies that were available were through a music-streaming site, one that warned us reviewers that the site scours the Net 24/7 looking for stolen copies. However, this could just be marketing at its finest: Emotional Mugger is a sort of paranoid record, one created by a demented genius, and reminding us so upfront about the punitive damages leakers could face seems to just feed into the notion that this is a special record. Whether a lot of people think that remains to be seen, but there’s also one thing you can say about Emotional Mugger is that it is never boring. In fact, if Bowie claimed to have attention-deficit disorder by moving onto new sounds after an album or two, then Segall just takes that disorder to the next level. Indeed, the sound of a song here can suddenly mutate and evolve, and, while there’s a consistency in terms of how songs are approached (Segall has a signature stamp on his music), you’re apt to hear a tape-trickery collage (shades of “Revolution 9”?) alongside foot-stompers such as “Candy Sam”. And that’s when Segall doesn’t change moods and tempos within the same song. Plus, for a relatively lo-fi recording, there are some unique production techniques that come from the cut-‘n’-paste / “editing tape with razor blades” school of thought: buzzy guitars that pulsate through both of your speakers may suddenly cut out and move to the right channel for a moment before bursting through again.
In short, Emotional Mugger is a regressive record in the best sense of the term: it takes the experimentalism and eclecticism of ’60s and ’70s rock, and presents it in a no-bullshit, no-varnish approach. Listening to it, then, is a bit of a breath of fresh air. While Segall is not doing anything terribly new or innovative — it does feel new and innovative because it hasn’t been done in so long. This is a disc that squiggles with all sorts of psychic energy, and channels enough crazy mantras to fuel a weekend-long drug binge. (If you’re looking for a soundtrack to a Lost Weekend, well, here you go!) However, this album is also the come down to the hippie utopianism of the Age of Aquarius, and had this record come out in, say, 1971, it would probably get Album of the Decade honours simply for nailing a particularly confused zeitgeist. Emotional Mugger is endlessly fascinating, and a puzzle to decode, making it the sort of album that you can find new things in on the 300th listen as much as the first. By taking the familiar, and running with it into unexpected places, Segall has created songcraft that owes itself as much as to avant-garde art as it does popular music. It may go further, pushing the boundaries of the skull and letting us peer into the deep recesses of a creative mind — one who loves music like they just don’t make anymore. Get past the bafflegab of a song such as “W.U.O.T.W.S.” (the album’s one real conceit to the truly experimental with songs blurring in and out of each other beyond all recognition), and Emotional Mugger is emotionally stirring. You know, this Ty Segall guy comes across as one pretty weird cat, but those people are the most interesting, sometimes. In this case, so is his music — it’s interesting, without meaning to sound pejorative in the least. Emotional Mugger has a broad enough reach for those who like their pop to be smooshed beyond all recognition, but, most of all, it’s fun to listen to. And that’s pretty much all you need to know, really — whether the artist’s weird or not.
Rating: 8 / 10
Ty Segall’s Emotional Mugger will be released on January 22, 2016, via Drag City.
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Zachary Houle is a resident of Ottawa, Canada, and is the recipient of a $4,000 arts grant from the City of Ottawa for emerging artists and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. He also has been a music critic, with music writing publishing credits in SPIN magazine and the Ottawa Citizen, among others.
