Following the hallucinogenic frenzy of his 2010 album, Melted, Goodbye Bread is the sound of Ty Segall mellowing out just a bit; this is a significantly calmer and more measured set of music than most of Segall's previous efforts, not to mention one that's tighter and more coherent. While much of Segall's work has been informed by his lo-fi guitar and drum bashing, Goodbye Bread represents a cautious step toward greater professionalism, with the needles not constantly pushed into the red and the melodies sounding a bit more straightforward while the accompaniment stays in sync with Segall most of the time. Segall has cleaned up the details on Goodbye Bread, yet the fundamentals are essentially the same; the slightly bluesy lope of the melodies is very much of a piece with Segall's work on Lemons, and though the guitar attack is tidier, he's still willing to go into fuzzbox freakout mode on a few tunes, such as "Where Your Head Goes" and "My Headplodes," where he shows his inner freak rocker hasn't gone away. What Segall brings to the music on Goodbye Bread is a greater sense of restraint and dynamics; he's put more thought into where to step back and where to charge forward, and his instincts serve him quite well, as the relatively cleaner audio (as if he's moved from a midline four-track machine to a dumpy professional studio) allows the details to show through with greater clarity (especially the harmonies), and this serves the songs without buffing away all the grit that gives these tunes texture. In short, Goodbye Bread sounds more like a "real album" than anything Ty Segall has done to date, but not so much so that it robs him of the loose-limbed soul that makes him memorable.
© Mark Deming /TiVo