Ty Segall – Goodbye Bread (2011) [Drag City] // Grade: B+

The slow burning Goodbye Bread marks yet another step in the young and extremely prolific career of Ty Segall. The whopping sixth solo LP since 2008, the Bay Area musician’s new batch is some of his most meditative and complex material to date. His first for Drag City, it took the 23-year-old six months to get it finished, which in Segall-land, feels like veritable ages. The gas behind his newest racecar is time-released through a polished and refined engine of his trademark adrenaline and fervor giving the 10-song distance an effortless ride that draws less from his beer-starved basement buddies and more from classic acts- it’s safe to say that you haven’t ever heard him sound this ‘trad.’

At 36 minutes—seven or so longer than 2010’s Melted — Bread feels more dragging than before; Segall gets drunk on a certain plain, teetering back and forth between riffed-out bursts and bluesy slink. Being that the tracks are more domestic, nourished, relaxed and more than ever in his own space, the young musician keeps the mature album very much in the confines of what he starts with at track one. Unlike previous material where a pile of blistering songs sitting next to each other allow one to get lost in the noise, Segall now wants his listener to stop and take a breather. It’s no wonder he’s mentioned in recent interviews that this is the first real record he’s focused on being a better lyricist with. Though he’s changing clothes and spending more time in front of the mirror, Bread is still very much a ‘Ty Segall record’ so fear not kiddies.

Filled with the normal dwellers of his basement or garage past, 60s rock ghosts, psych and heyday alternative, the album comes off as a warranted next step for someone already championed within the tight scene he holds membership in. Bread feels very rehabilitative and though it’s all relative compared to his ferocious back catalog, I wouldn’t dub this a fully-realized adult record just yet. It is noticeably pensive sure, but it’s the way his retellings come out much like his early few-minute jammers– direct and digestible– that makes me think he’s still has some growing left inside of him. Some will have a hard time seeing why any cleanse is needed, but after a listen to a few key parts, a little light is shed. The multi-instrumentalist lets spill moments of a suburban-settling twentysomething on “Comfortable Home (A True Story)” where he recalls buying a couch; on “California Commercial” he mulls over the anything-for-fame nature of his home state and how you can “Come to California and leave on a TV”- he grew up in the Laguna Beach and says his hometown was “ruined” by the MTV show. One of the record’s more interesting tracks is “I Am With You.” A real nugget of 70s guitar-riff, power pop roughness, the brief tune finds Segall harking on about what sickens him including “the kids” and “everything I can see.”

Like most of his contemporaries, the catalogs of rock ‘greats’ refuse to be overlooked and Bread is no exception. Our player doesn’t skip on giving us a pungent taste of what he’s had on the turntable lately: John Lennon, The Pretty Things, Neil Young, The Troggs and T. Rex, the last of which Segall released a cover EP of for Record Store Day.  Standouts like “My Head Explodes,” the slow-banging, fizzing spectacle of “Where Your Mind Goes” or the early-psych-meets-gutter-crunch feel on the fantastic “You Make the Sun Fry” all do well in illustrating the young player’s maturing mixture of clean vs. messy he’s been experimenting with since Melted dropped.

- The Holloweyed