LA INDIE-ROCK BAND GOON HEADS TO ATLANTA – SEPTEMBER 25 AT THE EARL
Posted by Liz and John Attaway, 9/6/25
Los Angeles indie-psych-folk-rock band Goon is headed to Atlanta on 9/25 at The Earl
Photo: Mallory Turner
ABOUT GOON: San Diego-born, LA-based frontman Kenny Beckerhad a record’s worth of new songs ready to record, studio time booked, and a vision for how it would all play out. But weeks into the recording, life hit him like a lightning bolt in the form of the sudden dissolution of his marriage and his subsequent psychic spiral. Blindsided by heartbreak, the music Becker had written for the record began to take on new meaning. What had come from joy was now something closer to agony. In the friction of that moment, Becker pushed his band—and his songwriting—into stranger territory. Facing down the pain and disappointment of life, the band created a masterpiece with their new album, Dream 3.
DREAM 3 ALBUM BIO
We always think we have a plan. We will walk into a situation with a purpose and an idea, only to find that life has other things in store for us. Goon frontman and creative mastermind, Kenny Becker, had a record’s worth of new songs ready to record, studio time booked, and a vision for how it would all play out. But weeks into the recording, life hit him like a lightning bolt in the form of the sudden dissolution of his marriage and his subsequent psychic spiral. Blindsided by heartbreak, the music Becker had written for the record began to take on new meaning. What had come from joy was now something closer to agony. In the friction of that moment, Becker pushed his band—and his songwriting—into stranger territory. Facing down the pain and disappointment of life, the band created a masterpiece with their new album, Dream 3.
Goon began 2015 as singer and multi-instrumentalist Kenny Becker’s solo project, releasing a compilation of his best home recordings, the 2016 EP Dusk of Punk. With a full band in tow, Goon released the band’s first full-length, 2019’s Heaven is Humming on Partisan Records. Becker recruited a new band—Andy Polito on drums, Dillon Peralta on guitar, and Tamara Simons on bass—and recorded the self-released Paint By Numbers 1. A second LP, Hour of Green Evening, and another EP, Red Ladder, soon followed in 2022. To support Hour of Green Evening, Goon hit the road hard, touring and playing shows with Built to Spill, Jadu Heart, Slow Pulp, Teethe, Squirrel Flower, and many others. Amidst all this, the band signed with Philadelphia label Born Losers and began recording their next LP with Claire Morison at Wild Horizon Sound in Los Angeles. Dream 3 melds the intimate, lo-fi stylings of Goon with the live-band sound of Hour of Green Evening; a veteran band exploring every aspect of their sound, pushing themselves into new musical and emotional realms.
“I began this record so excited,” says Becker. “The songwriting was less scripted, letting me loosen up the reins and follow whatever idea seemed most interesting. It started as a joyful recording process. Then came the most devastating time of my life.” The result is an often darker, more introspective album, built on personal loss and the chaotic crumbling of the outside world, without losing Goon’s signature sense of strangeness and wonder. Weaving lyrics about personal and ecological collapse with references to baseball, aliens, and Tony Soprano, the record expands Goon’s sound while holding close to the band’s core identity. Dream 3 offers an exquisitely crafted sonic world, full of heartbreak and pain, but also brimming with color and life, the hope of better days to come. “Begin Here” is the gateway into the record. The song emerges in a dreamy, reverse-guitar haze, Becker’s voice hovering over Braden Lawrence’s drums like a bird in flight, surveying the green wreckage of his world. “With ligaments split at sunrise/Bubbling dirt from my mouth,” Becker sings, “I’m open, scraped, and doe-eyed.” It’s the sound of a band discovering new life after torment, the way cataclysm brings its sufferers closer. Becker drops the surreal imagery for something more direct, referencing his bandmate as he sings, “Let me cry to Tamara.” “The song started as a little reversed guitar progression that I had kicking around for a while,” says Becker. “I showed it to our bass player, Tamara, who had a strong reaction to it and insisted we flesh it out. When I sing, ‘Let me cry to Tamara’ at the end, that’s because it’s what I was doing all the time we were recording it. To me, that song has this sunny, upbeat melody, but it’s coming from a place of total despair. I like that tension.”
GOON – DREAM 3
BORN LOSERS RECORDS
1. Being Here
2. Closer to
3. Patsy’s Twin
4. For Cutting The Grass
5. In The Early Autumn
6. Apple Patch
7. Fruit Cup
8. Toluca
9. The Morning Six Rabbits Were Born
10. Sunsweeping
11. Bottle
12. Fine
13. Jaw
