Ty Segall: Campy Irreverence, Sincere Appreciation

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Ty Segall's "Goodbye Bread" unfurls into a disarmingly mellow, casually masterful bit of haiku rock 'n' roll existentialism.

Courtesy of the artist

Ty Segall's "Goodbye Bread" unfurls into a disarmingly mellow, casually masterful bit of haiku rock 'n' roll existentialism.

Like so many kids born backwards into an endless digital landscape of ahistorical pop plenitude, San Francisco rocker Ty Segall writes by channeling — and lovingly warping — a carefully curated set of period references. His records are a playful pastiche of '60s proto-punk signifiers: curled-lip delivery, wailing guitar solos, even the fuzzy grain of the era's analog production. But there's more to Segall's music than a simple game of spot-the-influence. Along with his contemporaries in the West Coast neo-garage scene (Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps, Hunx And His Punx), he strikes his retro poses with a mix of campy irreverence and sincere appreciation. In Segall's case, the sincerity shines through — this is, after all, the guy who put a blown-up photo of an adorable floppy dog on the cover of his latest album.

The title track from Goodbye Bread could be a sleeper anthem for the legions of disenfranchised, underemployed young adults who, as new census figures reveal, are among the hardest-hit by the recession. "Hello Monday, goodbye bread" is the refrain, a line Segall delivers as though he's just woken up on a Monday morning, reluctantly facing another week of negligible returns. In depressing times, it's tempting to burrow under the covers, or into a record collection, in search of comfort. But as "Goodbye Bread" unfurls into a disarmingly mellow, casually masterful bit of haiku rock 'n' roll existentialism, it looks like the kids are going to be all right.