BLACK VINYL LP
or
CASSETTE.
"Each song on Ty Segall's eighth album seems to be an oblique short story about cheap thrills. The album's populated with addicts—people engineered to come back for more despite how shitty it may ultimately make them feel. Segall seems less focused on hitting the exact right notes and more concerned with establishing a strange, offbeat vibe, a match for the disembodied menace of the smiling doll heads on the sleeve. Where his last album Manipulator opened with stately organ, the synthesizers on Mugger are abrasive and off-kilter. Throughout the album, he is less focused on hitting the exact right notes and more concerned with establishing an offbeat vibe, one matching the cheerful menace of the smiling doll heads on the sleeve. The pace and structure of "California Hills" is briefly upended a few times for short bursts of frantic guitar work, and throughout the album, he switches between his traditional singing voice and a throaty, affected mystic dirtbag caricature."