Ty Segall, “Three Bells.”

No matter how intensely we try to imagine the future, tomorrow is always a little weirder than we envision. Our predictions are scuttled by unforeseen events and circumstances both great and inconsequential. Rock and roll has consistently outmaneuvered its supposed prognosticators, and no one grunging it up in the early ’90s could’ve imagined what Ty Segall had in store for us.

But it’s 2023, and Segall has spent the last decade updating our notions of rock. Three Bells is another missive from the bleeding edge of rock, an album that combines the adorable weirdness of the Beatles, the stoned musicality of Rush, the fiery passions of punk and the sumptuous psychedelia of Pink Floyd with the high fidelity and overdubbing possibilities of the 21st century.

Three Bells represents a lot of work. None of the songs are simple, and there’s a lot of them. The 15 tracks on the album involve an incredible amount of instrumentation.

There are no simple three-chord guitar parts; instead it feels like every track has an army of interlocking guitars, synths, vocals and sonic weirdness. The effect is a little like Picasso’s cubism, where simple images are exploded by simultaneous views from different perspectives.

Songs like “Void” and “The Bell” bristle with musical edges, acoustic twists and turns that stutter and hiccup with prog-rock spasms. But then “Void” offers up some lush Spanish-sounding trumpet to really scramble the musical genres in your head. “I Hear” offers up a seasick feeling of digestive weirdness similar to Bowie’s “Fame” but the guitar tone on the solo sounds like it required NASA technology to achieve its futuristic fuzz.

Much of the album is a collaboration between Ty Segall and his wife, Denée, whom he worked with on 2023’s Surgery Channel, by their band The C.I.A. “I’m singing ‘Hi Dee Dee,'” Ty sings over stabs of electric guitar in one of the album’s simpler moments. Denée sings with over the awesome funk/rock riffage of “Move” with the dispassionate delivery of New Wave singers like Berlin’s Terri Nunn.

The album also sounds like it was tremendous fun to make in the studio. The growling musicality of “Watcher” is begging for a YouTube “Rig Rundown” to elucidate its sonic mysteries. The funky and jazzy jamming on “Denee” almost sounds like Bitches-Brew-era Miles Davis. “To You” tugs at the heart with AM radio strings, “Repetition” vibes with White-Album-style weirdness.

Segall fans have a lot to celebrate. Three Bells builds on the relative sonic simplicity of his last album, 2022’s High Hello, without losing the human touch. The complexity of the music never overshadows the passions involved in creating it; perhaps the most difficult skill to master in rock and roll. What’s more, his creativity seems to flow like his pyrotechnic guitar solos—a seemingly endless series of musical twists and turns that carries him any direction the musical winds blow. This latest installment arrives fully realized, like a time capsule from the future, one we never could have predicted, but nonetheless can enjoy.