Review · 1990 · Alternative Rock
Sonic Youth - Goo
The verdict
Abstract experimentalism morphed into structured tune-based songs by this album
Song for Karen has such a cool structure - instead of breaks we get accelerating beats and driving energy
Alt rock pioneers with a bit of cross pollination with grunge from the perspective of 30 years later. I think the clinical term for SY is noise rock.
“Disappearer” is a cryptic ode to the sun, as best as I can tell.
This is the kind of DGAF I love. Smart musicians, not giving a fuck, writing smart music that somehow doesn’t take itself too seriously. The random noises help with that effect, paradoxically - I’ve often felt abstract noise music is too self celebratory in general, but not here. Songs like “Cinderella’s Bog Score” where the melody is buried in a discordant noise sandwich drove the point home - Sonic Youth’s noise is like the difference between a sung note and a scream - a clean guitar to a distorted one - they just took typical sound and structure and ideas and ran them all through a conceptual distortion pedal, twisting them but with enough respect to the original to identify it. This isn’t pure abstraction - it’s distortion of recognizable things. Picasso, not somebody slinging paint cans in a basement and calling it art (cough cough, Kid A, cough cough). Sonic youth is like the artists who paint detailed and clear paintings and then smudge the hell out of them, rather than others who go straight for the abstract chaos without wasting time on the structure beneath. It’s an easy call to me which requires more skill.
I love the juxtaposition of a couple of British mods on the cover against the distinctly American alt and grunge-adjacent attitude and noise. I can see the spirit of the mods picked up here, but without the grey-skies gloom that seems to hover over so many British acts. This is more joyful, somehow. I loved it.
Jams
“Disappearer”
“Cinderella‘s Big Score”
“Dirty Boots”
“Mary-Christ”
From the roundup Jamwise #36 - Best Albums of 1990.