Even as an avowed Ty Segall acolyte, I’m having a harder and harder time telling his various projects apart. While Fuzz started out as a means for the garage-rock wunderkind to explore progressive, proto-metal territories, it’s more recently become “the one where Ty plays drums.”
That’s not to say that the simply named sophomore album from the power trio isn’t a monolith. Segall’s lurching rhythms are once again augmented by Charles Moothart’s blistering guitar noise and Chad Ubovich’s thundering bass lines. While Segall dominates vocally, with “Say Hello” and “The 7th Terror” being particularly seething standouts, he’s not afraid to share the spotlight this time around.
Though only mildly collaborative, II is just as thrilling as many of Segall’s finest works. The urgency of Twins and the menace of Slaughterhouse (not to mention the sunbleached psychedelia of Lemons) are all present here. Try as he might, Ty Segall has yet to release an album that doesn’t sound like Ty Segall, and the world’s a better place for it.
—Eric Schuman
