“Shaking hands, living with, sleeping on, making it, eating up, breathing in. All of us”, sings Ty Segall, whose music has always toyed with lysergic, sinister intensity, but seems here to have clearly gotten pissed off at something (stubbed toe; disappointing weather; return of Love Island) and has twisted his druggy paranoia into some kind of furious nihilism.

Musically, it’s his most abrasive release yet. Even for someone as fond of fuzz pedals as Segall, the guitar sounds on Taste truly lacerate with every dive-bomb between the low and high notes of its juggernaut riff. It’s paired with the equally jarring buzz of what could be synths, but everything here is so contorted with distortion that for all we know, it could have been a french horn.

It’s not exactly clear what Segall seems to be raging against, other than some kind of vague notion of “society, maaaan”. It’s first half reads as some kind of Marxist call to arms, and it’s chorus as a loose and abstract social critique, (“Our salivating makes it all taste worse.”), but combined with a second verse about feeling fingers on his insides, whatever message he has gets somewhat lost in translation.

Although Segall’s usual nods to late sixties/early seventies psych are still present in the trippy harmonies and freakbeat arrangement, it must be noted that this record sounds like he may at last be writing with one foot firmly in the present; his other merely tip toeing in the past. While his last album proper, Joy, a collaboration with White Fence’s Tim Presley, sounded like a lost gem plucked from the early 70s, both in style and in sound, Taste sounds like Segall is reinterpreting his love for psychedelia to produce something new and relatively original. After all, beneath all the fuzz on this track is a syncopated drum loop that more than creeps towards hip-hop territory, making the end result sound strangely like the Chemical Brothers, only on different drugs.

Though Segall’s fury may be the sound of a man protesting of nothing in particular, it has resulted in a genuinely thrilling single that blisters the ear with every listen and points towards a potential reinvention.

7/10

After the warped alt-pop of last year’s Transgelic Exodus, outsider pin-up Ezra Furman’s announcement of the “punk album [he] always dreamed of making” is sure to be welcome news to anyone who has followed his rise to prominence over the past decade or so, as this single could be the most thrilling thing he’s released since the very beginning.

Calm Down… is, on the face of it, a jagged and jerky nod to the late 70s, when the brutality of Punk transformed into the colourful vibrancy of New Wave – all fuzzed-out major chords and agitated, stop/start structure, evoking Pixies and Minutemen alike. It’s the ideal setting for Furman’s brand of agitated, glamorous neuroses, more so than say, the affected Doo-Wop stylings of Perpetual Motion People or his more earnest, Dylan-esque moments. Here is a songwriter known for his blistering intensity stripping away stylistic frills in favour of something more raw.

Consequently, Furman sounds invigorated and well suited to the neon-lit, lipstick n’ cigs trashiness of his new direction, heard in his howled vocals, verging on psychobabble as he spits verses of speedy angst: “Happiness was never guaranteed, I wanted nothing more than to open up and bleed.” He describes it as “a slice of pure agitated rage”, and Furman’s visceral delivery and brutal lyrics certainly give it an authenticity which prevent it from drifting into dumb punk parody – instead resulting in his most urgent, exciting single since 2008’s Take Off Your Sunglasses.

Still the real deal fighting against a tide of froth, Calm Down… is Furman is at his unflinching best.

GROUNDED.

Single Review ::: Ty Segall – Taste

SINGLE REVIEW ::: Ezra Furman – Calm Down AKA I Should Not Be Alone

8/10