Ty Segall

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While there was a lot to love about the diversions on Harmonizer, it left me wanting a bit less oil-slicked darkness and a bit less claustrophobic vision of Ty Segall’s songwriting. Hello, Hi returns to his habit of mining classic riffs doused in saturated production. For a constant collaborator, this album finds Segall operating mostly on his own, a product of the isolation that’s caught so many over the past few years. The record leans far from anxiety, though, feeling as comfortable as he has in quite a long time. The record is love struck and satisfied, a product of his recent marriage and resulting comfortability, no doubt. The comfort from the record is as catching as the hooks, an ease that emanates from the acoustic fodder, strums twining like chunky knits against the world’s chill.

The record pulls from his less tumultuous past, with echoes of Sleeper and Goodbye Bread, but shorn of their shaggier countenances. That’s not to say it’s devoid of any crunch, he still wields his love for the T. Rex formula of clean acoustics and fuzz bomb assaults traced with an effortless edge. Yet, even when things get hairy, he’s still reclining against the gale force with a wink and a smile. To be fair, even comparing this to something like Sleeper is a cop out. The record feels like he’s scooped up the cleaner moments of the last few records — a ‘best of’ bliss out that knits the verdant air of songs like “Take Care (To Comb Your Hair)” to the pining of “Cry Cry Cry,” stripping even those back to a kind of MTV’s Unplugged combination of familiarity and fusion.

The relative lack of embellishment works for the album. Gone are most of Mikal Cronin’s horn stabs and the squirm of layered keys. The stripped-down demeanor works well, feeling like this has a lineage in loner psych-folk albums and private press ‘70s churners albeit with a few more resources. Like Skip Spence produced by Terry Manning, Hello, Hi flirts with quite a few of Segall’s constant sonic obsessions, but frames them in a new light that turns down the turbines so the sweetness can shine through.

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