Harmonizer

Ty Segall

It took a pandemic to finally slow Ty Segall down, somewhat. The prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from California has been consistently releasing an album a year since 2008, but Segall's 13^th studio album, Harmonizer, comes two years after his last. What I appreciate about Segall is that with each album, he tends to work with a different sonic pallette, and builds a world around it. This record is no exception and Segall shows his cards on the very first track, Learning, a sci-fi, synth-driven adventure that in a brief amount of time, summarizes where we're going for the next 36 minutes. Unfortunately, the journey turns out to be not all that compelling as the record lacks the sweet hooks and raw bite that made for some of his best songs and moments.

The only track that I really found interesting was Ride. It has an eerie, twilight zone, kind of vibe with a descending chromatic bassline that occasionally breaks to go into these more melodic lines. The character of Segall's voice is almost robotic with how little it deviates in emotion or pitch. You could call it a rather bland performance, but I think it actually works well with what he is trying to do on this song. Some other bright moments on the record are the choruses of both Pictures and Changing Contours. They both see a return to the squawking fuzz guitars that I think I first heard on his 2016 album Emotional Mugger. Both choruses have some awesome guitar harmony which serves as a nice break from the repetitive and conflicting guitar parts in the verses.

One track I wasn't really a fan of at all was Erased. It features this high-pitched synth tone that is incredibly grating and headache-inducing; which stretches throughout the entire track. And while I'm airing my grievances, the track Feel Good, which isn't actually all that bad, feels really out of place. It has this dance punk groove and the vocals are handled almost entirely by Segall's wife. Her performance is mostly spoken but it is quite flirty. The whole track feels like something The Kills would do and it is the first time where I felt like Segall wasn't putting his own mark on something, if that makes sense.

Except for Erased, there wasn't really anything that was offensive on this record, but there wasn't a whole lot to get excited over either. This tends to happen with Ty Segall records sometimes. There have been numerous times where Segall hits on a particular sonic palette that really elevates his songwriting, and this doesn't feel like one of those times. On top of that, I feel like this record is lacking some of Segall's eccentricities which make his songs truly fun and memorable. However, as I said before, no record is indicative of a direction in sound, so I anticipate that Segall will be working with something new on the follow-up.