Goo

About

Sonic Youth’s move to a major label in 1990 was a pivotal moment in indie rock history: Not only did the band members anticipate the erasure between “mainstream” and “alternative” music that Nirvana would finalize a year later, they demonstrated that they could be conservative when it came to busine, yet still radical in their music. With the move to DGC, Sonic Youth got a bigger budget for touring and marketing, and a reliable series of check. Don’t let the childish album title fool you: <i>Goo</i> was proof that the four avant-garde noisemakers in Sonic Youth were growing up. The major-label jump didn’t provoke an ethical dilemma for the band members—at least, not in the way it would for other artists in the 1990, which saw an almost Red-Scare-style panic around the concept of “selling out.” As Thurston Moore put it in the oral history <i>Our Band Could Be Your Life</i>: “At the time, there was no such thing as [being] <i>proud to be indie</i>. Being indie was just sort of, like—there was nothing else you could be. Major labels had no interest.” As a result of their business smart, the band members got paid—as did many of their friends—and the group held on to its creative freedom. In many way, <i>Goo</i> was an extension of the same arc Sonic Youth had been on since 1986’s <i>Evol</i>: The riffs were bigger (“Dirty Boots”), the songs were more legible (the Chuck D-featuring “Kool Thing”), and the combination of mystery, intelligence, and danger that had always made Kim Gordon magnetic got the spotlight it obviously deserved (“Tunic (Song For Karen)”). .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →