Sonic Youth - Goo

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NME.COM feature on Sonic Youth - Goo album including album review, artwork, tracks, listen now, tour dates, discography and more.

Release date: 07 November 2005

Tracklisting click track to read more

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Sonic Youth - Goo: Wikipedia Album Entry

Goo is an album by alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released on June 26, 1990. A remastered version was released in 2005.

Goo was the first album released after the band signed to major label Geffen Records. Their albums became more accessible and less experimental, but still retained elements of a trademark collage of noise. Many songs on Goo start and end abruptly; a departure from Daydream Nation which was known for its long, psychedelic guitar intros and outros.

Songs

The album's lead track, "Dirty Boots", evokes old blues slang in its declaration that "It's time to rock the road/And tell the story of the jelly rollin'/Dirty boots are on/Hi de ho."

The second track, "Tunic (Song for Karen)", is about Karen Carpenter, a female rock drummer who died from anorexia nervosa. It imagines her in heaven, happy, playing the drums again and meeting new friends Dennis Wilson, Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin.

The album featured the single "Kool Thing", on which Chuck D from the rap group Public Enemy guested. The song is purported to be about the disillusionment that Gordon experienced after interviewing LL Cool J for Spin Magazine the previous year. "Are you going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?" Gordon asks in the song, but receives only hipster gibberish in return. "Kool Thing" became the song that many casual music fans associate with the band. The album version of "Mary-Christ" fades out with a portion of the intro to "Kool Thing". This is because in the recording session for "Mary-Christ" the band went right into "Kool Thing", but this take of "Kool Thing" was not chosen for the album.

The album's title derives from the song "My Friend Goo", a portrait of a friend who "sticks just like glue."

Cover

The cover is a Raymond Pettibon illustration based on a paparazzi photo of Maureen Hindley and her first husband David Smith, witnesses in the case of the "Moors Murders" serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, driving to the trial in 1966.

The handwritten text reads, "I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road."

Video

In 1991, a long-form music video version of Goo was released on VHS. A music video for each song from the album is included; the track listing is identical to the "original release" list above. In 2004, nearly the entire contents of the Goo video was included on the DVD compilation Corporate Ghost: The Videos: 1990-2002; only a short fragment that appeared after the conclusion of "Titanium Exposé" on the 1991 video is missing.

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