“What is emotional mugging?” Ty Segall rhetorically asks us in a video preview for his new record, mocking the ‘you believe what I say because I’m in a lab coat’ bullshit of pseudo-scientific adverts, as Casio keyboard muzak plays in the background. Luckily Dr Segall is on hand to explain it to us: “a response to our hyper-digital sexual landscape … and essential practice in the age of digital intimacy … non-verbal and non-physical emotional exchange”. What he’s getting at is a well-trodden path by this point. Instead of bringing us closer together, technology is actually pushing us further away from each other and making any sort of meaningful connection more difficult.

Its unclear whether Segall really is trying to make a point about contemporary human relations with this new album or if this is purposefully obfuscating jargon. But if you’re using ‘Breakfast Eggs’ as an example, it doesn’t suggest any such nuanced approach to human relations. “Candy, I want your candy” he purrs, and it sounds more like a sordid late night encounter in a car park involving wandering hands, rather than a thoughtful reflection on technologies influence of emotional intimacy. ‘Emotional Mugging’ probably doesn’t have any fixed meaning, merely a juxtaposition that helps capture the “this is so wrong but it feels so right” sleaze everything on this album has been thickly coated in. This thing is dirty. Like weird smelling stuff under your fingernails kind of dirty, and a huge sound so all encompassing, it almost sucks the oxygen right out of the room.

But all the adjectives that you could attach to a raw, lo-fi garage record like this seems to detract from just how listenable a record it is. This thing grooves, and has melody in spades. Even calling it lo-fi feels like a disservice, when so much of the records sound and texture goes into making its queasy atmosphere and feel. The distortion on ‘Diversion’ is nothing short of monstrous and gives the run of the mill garage rock tune an undercurrent of bubbling anxiety. “Let’s ride” he suggests in ‘Emotional Mugger/Leopard Priestess’, but there’s a subconscious knowledge the good times are eventually going to burn out. The strange disjointed rhythm and toy-like organ sound on ‘Squealer’ makes a kind of deranged kids TV theme song. In fact the unconventional use of syncopation on much of this record goes a long way to creating its madcap landscape.

‘California Hills’ lurches between a Black Sabbath riff and frantic, sped up spasms. A bit like someone is fast-forwarding on a cassette to get to the good part again. “American Nightmare/ jilted generation / fingers on the pulse of their parents alienation” goes the chorus. The L.A the Ty is singing about is the same seedy and meretricious L.A of Ariel Pink and even a little bit David Lynch. Segall is perfectly happy spending his time with the freaks, the scumbags and the burnouts. ‘Candy Sam’, ‘Mandy Cream’ … in the most literal sense possible, these people sound like very unsavoury characters to be hanging around with. But that doesn’t mean they don’t make for interesting company. They’re the kind of people to show you the cities underbelly and teach you how to scratch it just right. All these characters come alive through Segalls’ vocals. He can sound coyly effeminate or drop his voice down to a low, deep croak, often adopting different voices in a single line. In ‘Big Baby Man (I Want a Mommy)’ he lets out an infantile sigh and the effect is nothing short of unnerving.

‘W.U.O.T.W.S’ is a simple but very effective narrative-framing device. After all the debauchery we’re left with sonic snippets of previous songs bleeding in. It’s the swirling happening in your soup for brains as you begin to regain consciousness at try and piece together what you just put your body through. Did I really say that? Did that really happen? ‘The Magazine’ is the comedown that follows, and all the paranoia and cold sweats that come with it. Insistent disembodied handclaps ring out and its like coming to the realisation that these racing thoughts aren’t going to be stopping any time soon.

I’ve never been a total Ty Segall devotee. To me he has always been the super prolific garage rocker that we had to settle for after the tragic loss of Jay Reatard. If you want evidence Reatard was the more interesting songwriter, compare his wilfully oddball Matador Singles ’08 compilation and Segall’s own competent but more by the numbers Singles 2007 -2010. But on Emotional Mugger Segall’s produced a record that lives in its own fully formed universe. There’s a strange darkness to this album and something almost hellish in the hedonism it revels in. I won’t pretend to have listened to everything Segall has put out, its an intimidatingly large catalogue to say the least. But if this isn’t one of the best things he’s ever done, then I should have been paying more attention.

Louis Ormesher
 

Website: emotionalmugger.com