reviews continued.
SONIC YOUTH, Goo (CD- DGC): Released last June as a major label debut, Goo is an album that snaps, cracks, and pops away from the non-linear jam of SY's eight independent releases. Goo definitely loses the baby fat quality of poor production, but it still retains the underground snarl and fuck-you attitude of the band.
Goo is undoubtedly the most polished, mature record from the band ever. Breaching the surface away from other post-punk muck with its real sense of urgency and witty songwriting, this is unique as a song-based portfolio of tunes, one that rocks within boundaries of warranted control.
Each song, framed with fading industrial smash and ambient-like guitar buzz from feedback, clearly captures the acoustic tap of duo Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's strumming techniques, as well as the explosive crash of their distorted three-shot power chord rhythms. The desperate twang of Kim Gordon's bass and throat, accented by Steve Shelley's rolling, crash-and-burn act on drums, round out this four-piece as the most interesting on the scene today.
The music is all whirlwind, heat and flash, like the line on the cover art. The first cut "Dirty Boots" opens with a high-note fade-in and off-color-pin-pricking. Then, the pulse of edgy guitar starts in, with a kick from the drums, to send up this song about, well, getting your footwear wet, so to speak, with action/sin/whatever. It's a motivational exercise of pure energy, one to be cranked up and lived as a full body experience.
Other songs, like the guitar-duel, drum-smash and moody "Cinderella's Big Score," take off like a murderous joyride. "Mote," Ranaldo's charcoal-smooth vocal contribution, sends the band's quirky, off-color sound into chilly melodies.
The second cut of the album, though, sets the tone for all of Goo. "Tunic (Song for Karen)" utilizes a quick-and-snappy bass-line, atonal guitar tunings and the art/speak voiceover of Kim Gordon, who gives a haunting portrayal of Karen Carpenter beside herself with anorexia and rock-star status: "I grow smaller everyday/But I look in the mirror and grow bigger in every way... She said/You're never going anywhere.../Remember Mom, what you said/Don't let it go to your head." A monologue for daughter Karen to mother Carpenter, this piece is a mad mix of gothic rock, dark and sinister, with a disturbing portrait of the rock star as victim. The rest of the project rocks in this manner, complete with abbey church bells and bloodcurdling, screeching guitar.
Goo is the finest album to gel together for the nineties. Sonic Youth are saviors, Goo is a godsend, and faith can again be bestowed in the music industry because of this collection of songs. (Steve Leone)
"Oh, I'm a tortured soul" Dept.
"Smack!"
Smack!
A peck from an angel
Hits my face broadside
Bruising
Accusing
Onward it begins to levitate
As I cling to the majesty's
Invisible cloth skin
Yelling,
"Save me from the amorous rush!"
With that exclamation
The angel screams
For the blood of Satan
From my hands
Has stained
It's ghostly robe
And the angel shrinks in the sky
Rendering me alone to cry forever
As It scrubs Its eternal garb
In the laundromat Of Heaven
--D. J. Beckwith
