Ty Segall & The Muggers @ The Art School, 22 June

The trauma begins with the delinquent racket of Ausmuteants. The four-piece rip through a short, sharp support set heavy on primitive rhymes, synth blasts and frenetic riffs, with track names such as Tinnitus and Kicked In The Head By A Horse going some way to indicate the level of insouciance the Aussie punks purvey.

An eerie sample of a crying baby then announces Ty Segall and The Muggers to the capacity crowd, before the group burst into the screeching synth, sludgy riffs and floor-rattling drums that signify Squealer, from Segall’s latest record Emotional Mugger. An experimental semi-concept album, Segall's eighth studio release does exactly as the title purports.

With its cover image of a vacant-eyed doll’s head, the record batters eardrums to a glorious pulp whilst deliberately teasing the frayed edges of the listener’s emotional psyche. That blueprint firmly in hand, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Segall leads an assault on the baying Art School audience that’s mostly bizarre, frequently bewildering, and utterly fucking brilliant.

Segall threatens an emotional mugging, but tonight his rowdy participants are ready, eager and willing. Assembled from the pick of the California psych rock scene, onstage the Muggers form a raucous, concrete foundation for their frontman's faux-menacing antics. Three songs in, the mosh pit is going berserk and pints are flying.

Our frontman only eggs on the mayhem; shaking his head in mock outrage, maintaining uncomfortable eye contact with unsuspecting audience members, and flipping the bird at the most rambunctious punters. The anarchy of Emotional Mugger/Leopard Priestess ends with guitarist Emmett Kelly's face comically streaked with mascara and Cory Hanson (of American psych outfit Wand) strapping on a guitar and bashing out notes on his keyboard with the guitar head between shreds.

For a young dude dressed in a boiler suit, Segall could out-charisma a cult leader. Fist pumped towards the ceiling with ironic vigour, he cries "us Muggers love you!" before beseeching the crowd to hug. "One big happy family...in the Art School," he deadpans. By the time the Muggers switch up instruments for a rollicking encore rendition of Finger, the garage-glam rock barrage of volume, humour and down right weirdness leaves a heaving Art School basking in the heady, collective depravity.