No one can be sure, save for Ty Segall himself, why the multifaceted guitarist named his seventh record “Manipulator.” But this title brings with it a duality — the word itself has either a negative or positive connotation — which finds itself at home in the album’s stylistic blueprint.
Punk claws into the psychedelic fabric of this album. Cacophony irrupts into melody. The grit of garage-rock grinds against slick studio production. Segall is not just a manipulator of sounds — he plays all the instruments on the LP save for one track — he’s also the manipulator of opposing sounds. On a track like “The Feels,” for example, what starts out reminding listeners of the Who progressively becomes sludgy and takes on darker tones championed by outfits like Melvins. And on the track “Feel,” the proto-punk bop of the Sonics is wrapped ever so carefully in the gauze of 90s grunge.
But even with all this antipodal friction stemming from Segall’s varied musical influences, “Manipulator” suffers, oddly enough, from a noticeable lack of heat.
Ty Segall, for those who aren’t familiar, is a garage rocker — a prolific one at that. In six years, he’s released seven albums, many of which cling to that genre. “Manipulator” — nevermind its slick, melodious, psychedelic undertones — is no exception. In a garage (albeit a damp one), heat equals humidity. Humidity sticks. The problem with this album is not only its lack of heat, but the inability of some of its songs to stick, to stay and to resonate with the listener after the record ends.
All isn’t bad, however. It would be unlikely for all to be bad, considering there are 17 (!) tracks on this record. So though there’s room for a few lukewarm duds — “Green Belly,” “Don’t You Want to Know? (Sue)” — there’s also room for more than a few bright spots. Where the light is on this record is where we find its heat.
One of the brightest — that is, hottest — tracks is “The Crawler.” “The Crawler,” unlike some lesser tracks, is immediate and energetic. It's fuzzy, scratchy guitars rush forth in a blitz, the drums bubble up from beneath and Segall descends from above, crooning in his false-falsetto. It’s an assault, and wonderful for that reason.
Tracks like “The Crawler,” “The Feels,” and the LP’s midway point “The Connection Man” stand out so brightly because of the heat, the energy within those tracks. The low points on this record are not so because they’re bad songs musically, but because of their lack of energy. They’re comparatively languid.
Languor comes as a result of the singer-songwriter Ty Segall moving ahead of guitarist Ty Segall. Singing and songwriting, though, are not Segall’s strong suits. Though he has noted in interviews that he spent an unprecedented amount of time writing these songs, it’s still hard to find any standout lyrics on “Manipulator,” hence the absence of them in this review.
Though his abilities as a singer and, particularly, a songwriter may be best described as tepid, Segall’s guitar skills burn a trail across “Manipulator,” making each song likeable, if not always memorable — much like the album itself.
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