Album Of The Week: Ty Segall Manipulator

This Album Of The Week column has been running for nearly three years now, so it's something of a surprise that Ty Segall has only appeared in this space once before. (He won Album Of The Week honors for the Stoogesian slobberknocker Slaughterhouse, and I was on paternity leave that week, so I didn't even write the thing; Corban Goble was the man responsible there.) Segall is a human garage-rock factory, and the catalog he's put together over the past few years has been, in its totality, spectacular: Album after album of deeply satisfying guitar jams, each one tackling a different nook or cranny of Segall's own personal aesthetic. But he's also got the unfortunate tendency to drop albums during busy weeks, so he keeps losing this thing. Hair, his great collaborative album with White Fence, lost to Torche in a decision that I might revisit if I could. Twins lost to Converge and arguably should've lost to Tame Impala. Sleeper lost to Superchunk. The self-titled debut from Segall's power trio Fuzz lost to HAIM. And it's not like Segall suddenly wised up. Manipulator, his new one, comes on one of the year's strongest release dates. He's up against Merchandise's darkly glimmering and authoritative After The End and Rustie's giddily ADD Green Language and the New Pornographers' explosively tuneful Brill Bruisers, as well as strong efforts from J Mascis and the Bug and Basement Jaxx and, yes, Ariana Grande. I almost wrote about Cymbals Eat Guitars' soaring and heartfelt amp-melter LOSE, an album way too good to be overlooked. But with Manipulator, Segall has finally made an album that transcends his own high standards, a sharp and immediate and tough and canny double-slab that, I'd argue, ranks as the best thing he's ever done. He couldn't be denied. It wouldn't be right.