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Personally, I think I may like Goo slightly more than Daydream Nation, at least at times. I'm still way more into the experimental/noise side of the band ala Bad Moon Rising and the SYR series, but as their poppier records go, I think Goo is nearly as fully realized as Sister, Daydream, and Washing Machine. Or for that matter the first record, which is another poppier one.
I never for the life of me understand this dichotomy of saying they did something or were some way up to a certain point in time and then never again. That just isn't Sonic Youth. They've always pushed at least two boundaries and sometimes focus on one more than the other. They followed the first record in all it's pristine glory with Confusion is Sex and then when everybody wanted to brand them "noise rock" they went back to melodic weird tuning stuff.
Goo is not my favorite Sonic Youth album, but I still love it, and think it's better than 99% of the recorded music I've had to hear in my life. My favorite song is "Titanium Expose" and there are some I like more than others, but even the cheesier moments ("Goo", "Kool Thing") work as they are so obviously intentionally so. I beg to differ on "Scooter and Jinx", as it's a cool little noise burst and doesn't pretend to be anything else. Kern's video for it is fucking awesome too!
In fact, the Goo video album is honestly about the only fully videoized album I've ever watched all the way through that consistently worked. The mix of visual and director styles is totally in line with the mix of audio directions. It's fun to watch and fun to listen to.
This seems to sum it up rather well actually: "It has this overall epic sense that isn't reducable to individual tracks, being somehow better than the sum of its parts."
All sparkly and shit.
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