One summer, Rob Good’s long relationship ended and a new one started almost immediately. He had a lot of feeling and nowhere to put it, so he moved into his studio and started recording. ‘Goodbye Summertime,’ the second album from his Oakland project The Goods, is the result: fourteen songs made while the grief and the giddiness were still arguing.
Good plays nearly everything himself. He’s on vocals, guitars, bass, drums, percussion and keys, and he produced and wrote every song. That can be a warning sign for self-indulgence, but the record doesn’t sound closed off. It sounds full. A few friends appear at key moments. Cherron Arens plays bass on “Summer’s Almost Gone,” “Driving” and “Wing” and helped with engineering. Yea-Ming Chen sings on “Punchbowl” and plays organ on “Sleepytime.” Ian McBrayer drums on “Dare Me” and the closer. Bart Thurber mixed and mastered, and the sound is warm and bright without feeling slick. The guests are used sparingly, which is why they land.
“Lazy” opens with a woozy, drifting sway that recalls the studio dreaminess of the mid-’60s, and anyone expecting straight power pop will be thrown. The hooks are still there, because Good can’t seem to stop writing them, but the palette is wider. Jangle sits next to psychedelic haze, and sunny indie pop next to folk rock. The debut stayed closer to the power-pop template, and this follow-up opens up considerably.
“Love You More” and “Don’t Worry” keep things bright. The second has the slightly strained cheer of someone talking himself into optimism, and the reassurance seems aimed at the singer as much as at us. Then come the two songs that set up the album’s emotional logic. “Summer’s Almost Gone,” with its ringing guitars, stacked harmonies and crunchy drum loop, is an urgent plea dressed as a singalong, a song about running out of time. “Minor Key” looks the other way, saying a quiet goodbye to something already gone. Played back to back, they pull in opposite directions, and neither cancels the other. The album’s honesty comes from refusing to pick one.
The middle stretch is where Good takes his biggest chances. “Everything But You” runs short and is gone before you can object, which suits it. “Punchbowl” is the biggest surprise, a melancholy Mellotron-heavy track with Chen’s voice drifting in like a half-remembered song. It slows the whole record down and makes the brighter tracks around it feel more precious. “Driving” picks up speed with Arens locked in underneath. “Wing” drops the armor entirely. It’s raw enough, the kind of exposed song most writers would smooth over before release. Good left it bare, and the album is better for it.
The back half is full of surprises. “Ginger Rose” is a small, sweet detour. “Dare Me” brings in McBrayer’s drums with a swagger that feels like flirting. “Make It” is power pop bliss. “Waiting,” is more sketch than song, but a lovely one, a pause before the final stretch. “Sleepytime” closes with a slow build of organ, drums and voice that starts as a lullaby and ends up closer to a benediction. It’s tender without being sentimental.
What stands out most is how little bitterness there is. Good says the sessions were joyful, and it shows. The pain is in the songs but never has the last word. The album is about getting through, and about finding you can mourn one thing and celebrate another on the same afternoon. Breakup albums tend to curdle into self-pity and new-love albums into syrup. This one keeps both feelings going at once, which is harder than it sounds.
The craft is generous, too. The harmonies sound placed by someone who loves harmonies, and the guitar lines sound played by someone who still gets a thrill from a good chord change. At a time of playlists and short attention spans, Good has made an album that rewards sitting still, with melodies you’ll catch yourself humming at red lights.
‘Goodbye Summertime’ is a farewell, and a warm one.
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