Kevin Bronson on June 19th, 2019

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L.A. noisemeisters Goon will release their debut full-length “Heaven Is Humming” on July 19 via Partisan Records, and as the quartet did on their first two EPs (re-released by Partisan last year), they have a way of making squalor sound downright pretty.

The creation of the album found main man Kenny Becker still struggling with a chronic sinus condition that debilitates his senses (including hearing) yet retaining the sense of optimism he’s had since Goon’s early days. “I find encouragement in the fact that I’m able to be productive in the times that I’m not sick,” Becker says. “People like to romanticize the periods in which, for example, someone like Van Gogh was suffering, but it was actually because he was sick that he would go outside and see a cherry-blossom tree and be struck by its beauty. It would make him realize, ‘This might be the last time I see this, I don’t know when I’ll have this snatched away from me again.’”

The album is a throwback to the days of grunge and college radio — rock that had a way of turning seemingly mundane moments or subjects into mini-epics. Besides the crush of guitars you want to let wash over you, “Check Engine Light” has a higher purpose.
“Snoqualmie” is a pretty little place with a waterfall in Washington state, and the song sounds like it. “Northern Saturn” sounds like something else from Washington state; that will be obvious.

The indie-rock world is increasingly small these days, but Goon is one band that makes it sound like a big, happy place, where everything is indeed humming.

||| Stream: “Check Engine Light”

||| Also: Stream “Northern Saturn” and watch the video for “Snoqualmie”

||| Live: Goon opens for …And you Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead on Friday night at the Echo. It’s sold out. Goon celebrates their album release with a show July 18 at the Echoplex, joined by Draag, KEVIN and a secret guest. Tickets.

||| Previously: Live at Echo Park Rising 2018, “Choke Throat”