The tireless psych rocker’s latest is simultaneously sleek and sludgy. It’s not quite his cleanest-sounding album, nor his heaviest, but it stands close to the top of both categories.
Harmonizer arrives after the longest stretch that Ty Segall has ever gone between albums of original material under his own name: just over two years, or 20 Ty Segall years. Before now, his longest gap preceded 2016’s Emotional Mugger (about 17 months), followed by 2019’s First Taste (about 13). Each of those albums also happened to be among his most bizarre: the former a choppy, devious conceptual escape, the latter a bouzouki- and koto-based experiment that arose from guitar fatigue. For Segall, working within the confines of garage and psych rock makes hairpin lefts a necessity; there’s only so much room in there for a guy who moves as much as he does. “I don’t think I can write songs on the guitar right now because I think I’m tapped out—I’ve hit my maximum guitar style,” he said around the release of First Taste. And when you’ve been as consistently good for as long as he has, it’s a cruel irony that it becomes harder to make something that really stands out. Returning from a relatively long silence with a confounding gesture is one way to try.
Harmonizer, however, makes sense immediately, regreeting his audience not with a cheeky bow or something in Pig Latin, but with a stoic and confident “hello again.” Co-produced and mixed by Cooper Crain and released by surprise last week, it maintains a simultaneously sleek and sludgy quality across its 35 minutes, like a cornstarch slurry gluing the whole thing together. Glistening, squelching synth voices and guitar effects fill up the mix, while Segall exaggerates his best fake British accent with ecstatic doom, sounding like an executioner riding out a sugar rush. It’s not quite his cleanest-sounding album (Freedom’s Goblin, probably) nor his heaviest (maybe Slaughterhouse, or anything that he’s made with Fuzz), but it stands closer to the top of both categories than any other.
The album distinguishes itself from the Segall catalog with extra-punctuated parts that slam into the ears, a calculated continuity enhanced by tracks that transition seamlessly, and a bunch of laser sounds. In fact, it would score a laser show nicely, and its unabating propulsion would fit equally well in a hockey arena, a HIIT class, or a high-speed chase. While it’s all too catchy and generally non-confrontational to be considered self-subversion, it does feel something like Segall tearing off his Stooges shirt to reveal a King Crimson one underneath it.
Harmonizer’s two best songs, “Whisper” and the title track, are its proof of concept, standouts that make the others sound even better and that deserve to become regulars at his blistering live shows. But the album’s songwriting doesn’t quite rise to the level of its overdrive energy, running out of gas towards the end and sputtering out with two tracks that mimic the established motions more than they thrive in them: The lead guitar buzzes through a fuzzbox, the lyrics describe sensory thrills, but the sense of all-consuming obsession over this new world fades. Some front-loading is forgivable, though: Segall is likely already obsessing over his next album, and by the time you reach the end of Harmonizer, it might be done.
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