Ty Segall: Melted

Like kindred spirits and former labelmates King Khan and the late Jay Reatard, Ty Segall makes perfect soundtracks for sweating, shitting, puking, fighting, and falling down. But with his third full-length, Melted, Segall adds another activity to that list: freaking the fuck out. The spirit of Syd Barrett and acoustic-and-bongos-era Marc Bolan seeps through every open wound of the disc’s 11 songs, a procession of cracked psychedelia that dribbles rubbery riffs and glowing earworms. From the White Album-on-even-more-acid bleariness of “Sad Fuzz” to the Sonics-spiked nightmare of “My Sunshine,” Melted leaves a trail of broken strings, echoing screams, and corrupted innocence as it tunnels its way out of the deepest, darkest pit of Segall’s hypothalamus. That is, when it isn’t being catchy as hell. Garage-rock—the umbrella Segall most often gets thrown under—has never been less adequate at describing his sound: As raw and remedial as it unabashedly is, Melted shimmers with a nearly symphonic dementia and a feral lust for melody. True, that melody may come unglued and wobble around at times. But that’s because Melted is a true, terrific, and times gleefully terrifying mirror of its maker.