original photo by Josh Drew
"Fruiting Body" by L.A. based GOON is so perfectly rendered. It might not be surprising to know that crafting mellow sonic art is a lot harder to do than harder edged songs. You will obviously notice things out of balance in a song that openly takes breathes more than possible anomalies in a noisy punk song. I love both extremes but that occurred to me while listening to what GOON has created here. The bending upfront guitars, a drum beat that is perfectly poised and open so you can hear the lovely spaces in between. Bass lines that embrace and hum instead of rattle and dreamy beautiful vocal harmonies that take a half a step back but are still present. I love how the drums part way, are reduced to highlight the interwoven complexities of the guitars. I love how the bass dances so perfectly with those drums. I love the melodies of the guitars and voice when they push against each other to dissonant places, like overfilling a balloon enough to feel tension but not to break. And I love the wind chime ambiance which in the wrong hands might feel pedantic but here along with unidentifiable sounds (maybe subtle synths or Melodica) works masterfully like a sonic pill to magically reduce your blood pressure.
The band indicates that "Fruiting Body"(referring to the spore-producing structure of fungi) was inspired by a long walk on a rainy day along the L.A. river. The band's intrepid leader, Kenny Becker says, “What I’m after is that sad and comforting feeling" and goes on further, "It’s kinda loose, but I felt like I was trying to get at the contrast between nostalgia and the present. Not that there’s anything wrong with looking back fondly at the past, it can obviously bring great joy. But sometimes to prevent myself from spiraling into an inescapable pit of sentimentality, I try to ground myself in the present. I think this is reflected in the first verse which looks at “worms in the leaf bed” where presumably the “pink glass” is found. And then, by contrast, the second verse is centered more on simple, small things happening in the present moment: my cat on the windowsill watching something, my mint plant beside her."
The song feels wistful and might push nostalgia buttons or past remembrances. For me it encompasses a bridge between 60's psychedelia, 90's grunge, a bit of 2000's dream pop (maybe even desert rock). It is funny but in some ways this cool evocative song feels like a collision of Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, Mazzy Star and Beach House.
“I found some pink glass buried under the deep end” - GOON
"Fruiting Body" is from GOON's EP "Paint by Numbers, Vol. 1" dropping digitally and on cassette on February 25th, 2022. Scroll below for further details.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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https://gooon.bandcamp.com/
“What I’m after is that sad and comforting feeling,” says Goon bandleader Kenny Becker. “The way it is when you’re out in nature but you can still hear the highway not far off.” It’s a good descriptor of Goon’s evolving aesthetic. After effectively rebooting his band—new members, new sound, new record, and no label—Becker found the freedom to make his best music yet. Goon’s latest EP Paint By Numbers, Vol. 1 expands the band’s sound immensely, bringing it in a lush, freer direction, hinting at wilder things to come.
Goon began as Becker’s Bandcamp solo project in 2015. At a friend’s encouragement, Becker compiled the best of the tracks and released them as an EP, 2016’s Dusk of Punk. He recruited bandmates from his college buddies and released a second EP, all the while working on the band’s first full-length, 2019’s Heaven is Humming. The band scored a deal with Partisan Records, and Becker thought his career was taking off. Then things didn’t quite go as planned.
“We spent way too long on the first album, trying to get it perfect,” says Becker. “Our big label debut. At that point, my bandmates were moving on, starting careers and families, all that. I wanted to tour, and the moment had passed. The label decided not to reengage us. It was a tough time.”
Undeterred, Becker regrouped, recruiting a new band—Andy Polito on drums, Dillon Peralta on guitar, and Tamara Simons on bass. He had a different vision for Goon now, making a decisive move away from Heaven is Humming’s grungier sound to a gentler, more expansive style. In late 2020, the band worked up new material and set about recording a second LP, Hour of Green Evening, over twenty days in Tropico Beauty studio in Glendale, California, to be released in summer 2022. Energized by the experience, Becker felt a desire to try something different.
“I was starting to feel a little too precious about the process for this second LP,” says Becker. “And with the pandemic going on, we just decided, well fuck it, fuck a label, let’s just put out an EP of brand-new stuff ourselves.”
Paint by Numbers 1 is the first of two EPs, done in a similar manner to Becker’s early Bandcamp days. Forgoing a traditional studio, Becker recorded Paint by Numbers 1 entirely at his apartment and the band’s rehearsal space, alternating between a used four track tape recorder and plugging straight into his computer interface. The songs were recorded quickly, capturing the urgency and energy with which they were written. Becker compares the songs to “sculptures or collages,” but “no less significant” to him.
“I don’t think it would feel right to simply call them ‘quarantine experiments’ or ‘pandemic recordings.’ It was in reaction to the conventional studio experience that I wanted to make these synth-heavy, super saturated, sort of weird bedroom pop jams.”
Becker also credits his pandemic time spent outside, hiking and plein air painting, for the shift in Goon’s sound. (Becker painted the cover art for the upcoming Hour of Green Evening, as well as designing the EP’s art.)
“Living in L.A., it’s hard to find ‘pure nature,’ says Becker. “There’s always something manmade around you. I wanted to capture that feeling in the music.”
This nature-focused approach allowed Goon to try a different approach to music, writing quieter, less muscular songs, with a much broader sonic palette than before. Becker’s attempts to situate natural sounds with more electronic ones is present in every song on the EP. You can hear it in the way “Garden of Our Neighbor” mixes lush synthesizers and brittle acoustic guitars with field recordings of birdsong and ocean swells, the manmade and the natural living side by side. There’s a greenhouse warmth to a song like “Fruiting Body,” the feeling of being surrounded by life, blossoming plants, fragrances and colors, brimming with a sense of wonder. How Becker’s wife Emily Elkin’s vocals soar birdlike over the grooving, bubbling electronic landscape of “Siren Rising.”
EP highlight “Hi from Beyond” has shades of Goon’s more aggressive past. Becker’s vocals are warm and lush as he sings, “Every worm and bug had its day to be today,” giving way to a caustic guitar freakout at the song’s heart, and the song gently returns to itself, more powerful and beautiful than ever.
“Sometimes when I’m feeling anxious, I’m able to find a bit of calm in the thought that every bird, bug, whale, tree, butterfly, frog, etc, all had their own day today too,” says Becker. “There’s a very valuable perspective shift that happens when you really think about all that happening, out there in oceans and forests that I’ll never see or even remotely accurately imagine.”
The eponymous track is one of the more playful songs on Paint by Numbers 1. A song Becker describes as a mixture of both “loose and tight” production, it’s the sound of the band fully embracing their new direction, with Becker’s electronically-pitched voice hovering beneath blown-out drums and the warm buzz of synths, guitars scuttling like insects.
Paint by Numbers 1 is the sound of a band exploring, pushing the boundaries of themselves, discovering all they can do. These are songs to wander through, peppered with spots of joy and wonder, born out of resilience and hope. With a new LP and Paint by Numbers 2 on the way, Goon is carving its own path through the musical world, a band that could go anywhere from here.
[written by Jimmy Cajoleas]
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