Goon leans on intuition for ‘Dream 3’

Kenny Becker compared the creative process with chasing a magic rabbit through a deep, dark forest. “It’s taking all of these turns, and you can’t see where it’s leading you, so you just sort of follow it down these random paths,” the Goon singer and songwriter said by phone in late September. “And then, once you step back, you realize the path you took and can see it for what it was. And it’s definitely more like that than following a blueprint, where you can see what it’s going to be from the very beginning.”

Becker experienced this sensation in crafting the Los Angeles psych-pop band’s excellent new album, Dream 3, released in July, describing how the songs took shape intuitively in the studio as the musicians experimented with the myriad tools available to them. “And forcing yourself into a position where you’re being reactionary really allows you to be yourself more, because instead of chasing perfectionism you’re doing what sounds cool in the moment,” said Becker, who will join his bandmates in concert at Rumba Cafe on Tuesday, Oct. 7. “You put down a drum sound, or you have a little guitar idea, and then you print it with the effects, or you distort it on the tape machine. And then it’s like, okay, that’s set in stone. Now what?”

Pulling back further, Becker said entire Goon albums tend to serve as reactions to the ones that came before. On previous records, the band leaned into its more naturalist side, with Becker frequently penning lyrics that made reference to the natural world – a tendency he traced to a transformative landscape painting class he took while enrolled at Biola University, a private Christian college in La Mirada, California.

“It was intense and hyper-focused, where it was all that I was thinking about day and night for a really awesome condensed chunk of time,” said Becker, who attended the school intending to focus on biblical studies but pivoted to art when he realized his beliefs didn’t actually align with the college’s teachings. “There’s something about landscape painting where you feel like you’re out in the world, and you can take what’s in front of you and twist and shape it.”

These lessons inevitably bled into the more nature-forward albums that landed prior to Dream 3, leading Becker to pivot this time around, trading songs that lingered in his exterior world for ones that explored a more internal, human one. It helped, of course, that the frontman experienced a painful breakup in the midst of recording, which naturally grafted to the songs he was writing and can be heard in the fractured lines present throughout, Becker singing: “Then the warning comes, something wrong”; “I have that empty stare”; “To the bottom where I’m sinking.”

“It really became a breakup record, which I totally did not intend, but it turned into this vehicle for my grief and agony,” Becker said. “And I’m pretty proud of the degree I was able to be honest about my pain. … In the moment, it was like, yeah, this feels like it might be an intense thing to say, but it feels true. I think that pain and that heartache was infiltrating every part of my perception.”

Musically, the band often moves counter to these lyrical bloodlettings, delivering hazy tunes that hit like waking dreams (“Apple Patch”), deliriously sun-kissed psych-rock tracks (the aptly titled “Sunsweeping”), and songs that envelop the listener like glittering pixie dust (“Fruit Cup”). The sonic haze that ripples throughout the recording is purposeful, with Becker sharing that he began to view distortion and saturation as a tool for making something feel more innately human. “I found it so exciting to record something, put it in a machine of some sort, and have it come out the other end to see how it had changed,” he said. “And often, it was like, ‘Oh, wow. This feels like it has five or 10 years of grit on it.’ And that made me feel like I could trust it more.”

As a result, a majority of the songs on Dream 3 ripple with a natural warmth, providing comfort in spite of the sometimes-heavy subject matter. Becker linked this delicate balancing act to a fondness for crafting songs that listeners can’t easily pin to one end of the spectrum, and which he said can leave them more susceptible to being emotionally leveled.

“I’ve always enjoyed where a song is able to disarm you and hit you in a way you don’t expect it, rather than being able to brace yourself,” he said. “And really, those mixed-up vibes of happiness and sadness are somehow truer to life, in a way. We all crave patterns and meaning, but sometimes it all just kind of happens. Everything is chaotic and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. And sometimes it feels good to make music that reflects that.”