The former enfant terrible of the garage scene toys with fuzz and reconnects with his dark, electric heyday on a pristine new album titled Chrome.
Let me state it outright: the new album from the Laguna Beach kid is a fuzz record, i.e., the heaviest, loudest, and most urgent the American has produced in quite a while.
Out go the polished textures of Possession (2025), the labyrinthine maelstrom of the double LP Three Bells (2024) and the sound-design exploration at work on First Taste (2019), Harmonizer (2021) or Love Rudiments (2024). A completely different form of radicality takes over. Obscure, raw and eccentric.
An End-of-the-World Atmosphere
It’s no coincidence that the Chrome cover resembles the warped portrait that adorns Twins (2012), one of the most frenetic albums in the Californian’s rich discography. After all, the riff of Black Paint, the first single, carries that same something from Thank God for Sinners.
Even the lyrics validate the lineage: “I watched the other twin get twisted up again,” a way of confirming that Ty Segall’s Gemini alter ego, notorious, is indeed back to haunt these new compositions.
Influenced by the scene and powered by the strength of collective playing, Chrome then reconnects with the artist’s dark, electric heyday. With Twins as the main reference, not to mention the monstrous Slaughterhouse (2012) and the fever of Emotional Mugger (2016), he carries his doom-laden outbursts and other end-of-the-world jams into noise and fury. Nothing better to let its author shine again.
Chrome (Drag City/Modulor). Release on August 28. On tour at Bataclan, Paris, September 17 and at Paloma, Nîmes, on the 19.
