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thank God this isn't a Fall messageboard, otherwise this whole reassessing thing would take years. As it is it should only take a couple of days, especially the way this insomnia thing is hitting me right now. I don't think I've listened to this much Sonic Youth in this short a space of time in, well, ever.
So anyway, Goo, an album that for the longest time I've been pretty down on. I'm one of those boring 'it all went wrong after DDN' types, which is why it's been sort of great for me to listen to the later stuff again with more of an open mind. So, as ever...
..here goes
1. Dirty Boots. A nice riff that's sort of loose and lazy but still has enough energy to move the old hips. The chorus though is just a little bit too eager to please, if you know what I mean. For some reason I can never listen to this without thinking of that awful video they did for it.
2. Tunic. I always think, given its theme, that this would've fitted in well on EVOL. Interesting how violent the music here actually is, especially compared with Kim's laid back vocal delivery. This is largely lost in an awful mix, even on the Spec. Edition remaster.
3. Mary-Christ. Straight ahead thrash-pop run through with some OK distorted backing vox and a nicely strangulated solo but ... well ... not that great really.
4. Kool Thing. I can imagine that this divides people. I quite like it. The vox are of course great but again, like Tunic, it's easy to forget just how savage the music is on this one. Again though, this is lost in the mix.
5. Mote. I'm not as big a fan of Lee's stuff as some people are on this board. I tend to find his songwriting a little awkward compared with his guitar playing. As such, I like the music here a lot but find the vox and structure a bit, well, shit really. Of course, the centrepiece of the track is the noise section at the end which is what Lee's always done best anyway.
6. My Friend Goo. Forget the irritating sing-along vox and listen to that bass. Kim really is one THE great bassists in rock and its a shame how she's increasingly sidelined this part of her role in the band.
7. Disappearer. There's no substitute for good songwriting and all the nice little guitar lines in the world won't save this from being just a pretty bad song. It's like 100 things going on at once, only about five of which are any good.
8. Mildred Pierce. More filthy bass from Kim and some great shouty vox from Thurston at the end. Short but rather sweet.
9. Cinderella's Big Score. Given the theme of this song it seems a bit hard to criticise it, but anyway. Apart from this truly amazing little throwaway guitar riff from Thurston that comes approx. three minutes in CBS is a bit of a mess. Another case of too many things happening at once, too few of which are actually any good. This really is one of the most poorly produced albums imaginable, and all the remastering in the world won't alter that fact.
10. Scooter and Jinx. Sounds like the end of Mote. Only less interesting.
11. Titanium Expose. Musically this sounds a lot like Kool Thing. Unfortunately it has this really weak guitar hook and the whole thing is just far too messy, which sort of sums up the album as a whole for me.
Remembering that this is the band that wrote songs like Brother James, Death Valley '69 (albeit with Lydia Lunch), Expressway to Yr Skull, Schizophrenia and Teenage Riot it seems incredible that they couldn't write a single decent song here - especially considering that this album was meant to act as a springboard for their big leap into the mainstream. It's almost like the pressure of commercial success had frozen their more instinctive talents. I really think it took them up to the release of A Thousand Leaves to properly recover from this disaster of an album which, if anything is actually worse than I remembered.
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