Sonic Youth
– Goo
Goo isn’t just a mess of feedback and tape hiss—it’s a statement, screamed with lipstick smeared across its face. Sonic Youth’s 1990 major-label debut didn’t clean them up or sand them down. Instead, it blew the doors off what “alternative” meant before Nirvana rewrote the rulebook. The band sharpened their noise into something hook-adjacent, wrangled chaos into melody, and turned Kim Gordon’s whispered threats and Thurston Moore’s beat-poet mutterings into something approaching pop. But make no mistake: this is still the sound of guitars bleeding.
Best of…
What makes Goo hit is how it balances disorientation and accessibility. These songs flirt with structure, then dismantle it mid-verse. There’s a sense of instability baked into every riff, every switch from Moore to Ranaldo to Gordon. It’s like they were building a sandcastle during a thunderstorm—and they liked it that way. Even when the songs feel loose, they’re held together by intent, not accident. Lee Ranaldo’s jagged leads act like detuned punctuation marks. Steve Shelley drums like he’s trying to rein in a wildfire, not extinguish it.
It’s also an album full of menace and muscle. “Goo” took feminist fury, art-damaged instincts, and downtown grit and shoved it into the mainstream’s lap. Kim Gordon doesn’t sing so much as command attention. And the band, ever the anti-rock stars, made sure the guitars had the last word. There’s nothing slick about it. Goo doesn’t want to please you. It wants to burn the couch you’re sitting on.
Choice Tracks
Dirty Boots
Track one. The gateway drug. “Dirty Boots” is as close as Sonic Youth gets to a love song, which means it’s cryptic, sludgy, and ends in six-string detonation. That dreamy opening riff is bait. Then the band explodes into noise like they just remembered who they are.
Tunic (Song for Karen)
Kim Gordon takes Karen Carpenter’s ghost out for a walk and lets her rage quietly in the corners of a white-walled pop nightmare. It’s eerie, empathetic, and weirdly catchy. Gordon doesn’t preach—she haunts.
Kool Thing
The closest Goo comes to a hit, and it still sounds like it was broadcast from a radio station on Mars. Kim Gordon interrogates LL Cool J, gender roles, and rock star machismo while Chuck D drops in to remind you this wasn’t your average MTV rotation cut.
Mote
Lee Ranaldo’s contribution, and it’s a slow-burn fever dream. The first half drifts in a haze, almost meditative—then it snaps and unravels into a howling mess of distortion. It’s beautiful in the way trainwrecks are.
My Friend Goo
A minute and a half of bratty, clanging joy. It sounds like a sarcastic pep rally in a crumbling basement. The title track in name only—it barely hangs together, and that’s its charm.