My Goodness
The Sunset, Seattle, WA
08.20.16
It’s been eerily quiet since last fall on the part of My Goodness, but the Seattle band reappeared at The Sunset in Ballard with a new lineup, and new tunes to match. The duo at the heart of the band – vocalist/guitarist Joel Schneider and Andy Lum, who has switched from drumming to keys and guitar – spent the winter writing a new record, and then decided to add two players to fill out the live set. And lo-and-behold, they tapped Kyle Veazey (drums) and Josh Starkel (bass) of Duke Evers to rock with them, creating what might be the ultimate local mashup to showcase some brilliant new music.
The foursome kicked their set off with a blast, Schneider rocking his full voice more than he has in the past. Where there used to be heavily applied vibrato and scream, there is now a melodious clarity of tone. The new material also defies and improbable amount of genres, even more so than it did in the past, with a swift kick of electronics (that never lean too electro-pop). Schneider joked that it “Used to be they were squeezing in a new song halfway through the set, like ‘shit, I hope we don’t mess this up.’ That’s like every song tonight.” And out of their 12-song set, only two were throwbacks to 2014’s Shiver + Shake.
But they certainly didn’t seem to mess anything up. If you thought Lum was a firecracker on the kit before, his passionate new venture to the keys and some wailing guitar work was all twitchy fingers and energy, and the chemistry between all four guys was easily apparent. The preening, emotive, hair-tossing rock duo of Starkel and Schneider is borderline overindulgent, but the raw edges are where it’s at with these guys. “Swim” opened up with twinkling cymbals into massive guitars, “White Witches” broke the tempo into a moody, swirling pool, and “Scavengers” is likely going to break the radio this fall.
Stay tuned for more as My Goodness puts this work on the front burner.
My Goodness Set List
Islands
Elevators
Alright
Sweet Tooth
Swim
White Witches
Scavengers
Haunt
Cold Feet Killer
Cut Teeth
Silver Lining
Ghost Town
Review by Stephanie Dore
Photos by Sunny Martini
My Goodness
