Album Of The Week: Goon Dream 3

Kenny Becker had an idea. Goon, his LA-based psych-pop quartet, had just released 2022’s Hour Of Green Evening, a lush live-band affair tracked together in the studio. That album was a work of placid splendor, achingly pretty but with a vaguely unsettled undercurrent, like a darker, more lysergic update on Real Estate’s pastoral sighs. It was a real achievement, one that elevated Goon’s standing within the independent music world, but Becker was feeling the urge to mess with the band’s approach next time around. He wanted to merge the pristine, straightforward, live-in-the-room qualities of Green Evening with “more of the haphazard, intuitive, 4-track cassette, homemade style” that had previously characterized the band when he began it as a home recording project a decade ago.