Release Date: June 21, 2011
Ty Segall’s musical influences, to someone who’d never heard his music, it would probably sound something like this: A huge, blistering, cancerous tumor filled with garage rock. It’s been collecting riffs and guitar tones from all over the place, from psychedelia to grunge, sounds from the ’60s to Wavves (and by Wavves, I mean Jay Reatard), and the longer Ty keeps it up, the more the cancer spreads to his whole body.
Goodbye Bread is your typical 10-song LP from a guy in California that has been playing drums and guitar for years. There are a few things that separate it from your typical run-of-the-mill lo-fi album right off the bat, though. Goodbye Bread was put out by Drag City, which means Steve Albini decided this album was worth some of the last reel-to-reel analog recording tape left on the planet. This recording process adds to the album’s sound, and Ty actually plays every instrument. Combined with the album’s slower, slimy and at-times shimmering production, Goodbye Bread is something worth listening to.
The album wasn’t recorded in someone’s mom’s basement on a friend’s copy of Garage Band—not to say that good music can’t come from DIY situations and constraints, but Goodbye Bread had some thought put into it and was polished to the garage rock tome that it is.
Segall’s influences on this record vary almost song to song. “California Commercial” and “Where Your Head Goes” sound like Dead Meadow. Goodbye Bread isn’t just one droney song after another; in fact, it is almost quite the opposite. But the most interesting parts of Goodbye Bread are the tempo and pace shifts throughout the album, as well as certain songs.
“The Floor” is a great example: it has a repeating guitar riff, which might be the only guitar lick on the album that doesn’t have distortion. It tricks the listener into thinking it will be a faster track, but it ends after a few bars and Ty slows the verses down. Then about two-thirds through the song, the tempo gradually increases and gets faster until the screeching guitar solo-ish riffs start to blast through the speakers. This isn’t your dad’s typical verse-chorus-verse.
The fuzzy, washed out and distorted bands you forgot you loved are Ty’s main influences on Goodbye Bread. “My Head Explodes” sounds like a real Nirvana song with the guitars and Ty’s half-moaned, half-whined, half-screamed vocals as he belts out, “My head explodes/My head explodes/Like the water/Like the…” and trails off the last line in a true Cobain fashion.
“I Can’t Feel It” is a slow, shimmering track that sounds like T-Rex with multiple vocal lines and harmonies. “You Make The Sun Fry” sounds like something John Lennon could have done if he had mixed “Helter Skelter” with “I Am the Walrus,” not only with the instrumentals, but with the rhyming lines that seem like nonsense, but just feel so right to sing along to. The loose yet infectiously sticky vocal melodies in “Comfortable Home” sound like The Cramps.
Close your eyes and put on the first track of the album. Tell me who it sounds like. If your answer isn’t something like the Olivia Tremor Control a-la “Green Typewriters” put in a blender with Guided by Voices, then you’re reading too much Pitchfork.
Ty Segall Goodbye Bread Tracklist:
- “Goodbye Bread”
- “California Commercial”
- “Comfortable Home (A True Story)”
- “You Make the Sun Fry”
- “I Can’t Feel It”
- “My Head Explodes”
- “The Floor”
- “Where Your Head Goes”
- “I Am With You”
- “Fine”
