REVIEW: Ty Segall, Goodbye Bread

Ty Segall's latest, Goodbye Bread, starts out with the title track, a little mournful, but with a nice ragged guitar strumming in the background... and it ends with "Fine", which slowly ramps up from a very psychedelic chorus ("Oh, you know I love, loving is what I do") to a raw guitar solo, before fading out with a finger-picked run behind Segall bidding us farewell...until next time.

Here's an acoustic version of the title track "Goodbye Bread":



In between, it travels here and there, with songs that meander and change, but always return to a ragged tunefulness. Honestly, and I may be alone here, Goodbye Bread reminds me of records like Jack Logan's Bulk, Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs or Guided by Voices' Bee Thousand: raw pop/rock that eventually, slowly but surely, becomes a record collection stalwart... deceptively lo-fi, but with subtle touches throughout that show a reflectiveness and work ethic you expect from an artist with staying power... somebody like, say, Robert Pollard or Don Van Vliet.

Interestingly, it's a very acoustic guitar-based record (with, certainly, some excellent electric guitar runs and a few fairly scorching solos, including the eventually out-of-control outro to song 9, "I Am With You"). A lot of the texture is supplied by reverb on the vocals. But, again, there is plenty of 60's Sonics-style garage-inspired guitar and anyone drawn to Segall by last year's Melted will find plenty of that good, dirty rock sound here too. It's not easy to try for "accessibility" while still teetering on the brink of pure noise, but it's a task Segall accomplishes here.

While perhaps not as instantly catchy as last year's Melted, this is a better record overall. I expect it to stay with me longer, and with an artist this young (he's 23) with this much work behind him already, that's a great sign.

Ty Segall - Goodbye Bread, at Drag City Records (listen to samples, buy download, vinyl or cd)

Ty-Segall.com (good luck finding anything here)