PREOCCUPATIONS w/ Goon at Kings

Name: PREOCCUPATIONS w/ Goon at Kings
Start: 2025-06-22T19:00:00-04:00
Location: Kings

Schedule

Sun, 22 Jun, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Kings | Raleigh, NC

—andmoreagain presents—
Preoccupations
w/ Goon
at Kings
Raleigh, NC
doors 7pm // show 8pm
$22 adv // $25 day of show
Presale tickets go on sale at 10am Feb 13 [code: andmoreagain]
——
PREOCCUPATIONS
With love and pride, Preoccupations present to you: Ill at Ease, our 5th long play and our first on the Born Losers record label.

After thousands of hours of scrutinizing over every last detail of this record, I find myself with the unenviable task of now trying to explain why we made the thing, what the thing is, and who we are.

We’ve been defining and redefining for a mostly very lucky 13 years. Lucky if not counting all of the broken bones, broken vehicles, exploding gear, stolen gear, lost baggage, lost friends, lost hearing, and lost minds. We once thought some of these misfortunes might be exceptional, but getting older we realize these are all just things that come with the territory, and the rewards we get for the passing of time. We’ve played 400+ shows across the globe, usually living and working together in claustrophobic quarters. We’ve aged together, making albums along the way. Some have even been reasonably acclaimed, others have been merely tolerated.

Which brings us to the now and our album Ill at Ease. It’s hard to say how it fits into our canon, but it’s definitely drawing from places or genres that we haven’t drawn from in the past. Whether we want to admit it or not, any music we’re currently listening to is, I’m sure, always informing our collective subconscious.
The well of dark things to write about seemingly has not dried up, and lyrically, it’s where I still tend to draw from. Draining all my anxieties into a song is often the only way I can get through a day. Some songs exist in a world with barren plains of burnt earth, covered in a dust of shame, dread, death, where all the things I love are things that K*ll me. Some come from the perspective of another distant world, looking skyward into a science fiction ocean of space, solitude, slight hope. Sometimes I’m looking around at the world that we live in now with incredulity, hilariously dissatisfied with how it’s all turned out, and assuming that it can’t be long before it’s all over. Some songs are just a reflection of me looking down at my feet while I trudge along wondering what I’m doing with myself, and if the ground is going to fall out from underneath me at any given moment.
At the end of it all though, this is simply another collection of new songs, and after 13 years, it is our pleasure and our privilege to still be making new things and to be sharing these new worlds we’ve created. For now, the ground is still firmly beneath us, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it might not be for long, and we will forever be, Ill at Ease.
・Listen: open.spotify.com/artist/2bs3QE2ZMBjmb0QTqAjCj3
——
GOON
Music can be catharsis and a refuge both, a way to expel the pain of a tragic situation and also to find comfort in the creation of something beautiful. With their new single, the haunting, autumnal “Death Spells,” Goon occupies both of these spaces, evokes an experience of immense pain and the journey through to the first steps of healing.
Goon began in 2015 as singer and multi-instrumentalist Kenny Becker’s solo project, releasing a compilation of his best home recordings, the 2016 EP Dusk of Punk. With a full band in tow, Goon released the band’s first full-length, 2019’s Heaven is Humming on Partisan Records, followed by the self-released Paint By Numbers 1. Becker recruited a new band—Andy Polito on drums, Dillon Peralta on guitar, and Tamara Simons on bass—releasing a second LP, Hour of Green Evening, as well as another EP, Red Ladder, in 2022.
To support Hour of Green Evening, Goon hit the road hard, touring and playing shows with Built to Spill, Jadu Heart, Slow Pulp, Teethe, Squirrel Flower, and many others. In the midst of all this, the band signed with Philadelphia label Born Losers and began recording their next LP with Claire Morison at Wild Horizon Sounds in Los Angeles. The new album brings together the more intimate, lo-fi stylings of Goon with the live-band sound of Hour of Green Evening, pushing the band into fresh territory.
“There has always been this part of Goon that has been very homemade, four-track recorder vibes,” says Becker, “along with the more band-oriented stuff from the last record. Working with Claire has given us the opportunity to combine the best of both worlds and come up with something new.”
The result is an often darker, more introspective album, built on personal loss and the chaotic crumbling of the outside world, without losing Goon’s signature sense of strangeness and wonder. Weaving lyrics about ecological collapse with references to baseball, aliens, and Tony Soprano, the record seeks to expand Goon’s sound while holding close to the core identity of the band. The album offers a carefully-crafted sonic world, one full of heartbreak and pain, but also brimming with color and life, the hope of better days to come.
To celebrate their new label signing and their forthcoming LP, Goon is releasing an independent single, “Death Spells.” The song was recorded over a two-week period in October, also with Claire Morison. Coming off a difficult time in his life, Becker felt it important for the whole band to present for the recording, even inviting Becker’s old friend (and the band’s original guitarist) Drew Eccleston to sing harmonies. After spending over a year on the forthcoming full- length, Becker wanted to record quickly, running on a pure burst of inspiration.
“I wanted everyone to play on this one,” says Becker. “It feels really special, and comforting. The way your friends gather around you in tough times, when you’re hurting, to make music together.”
A deceptively quiet song at first, “Death Spells” sneaks amongst the foliage, carrying a note of warning. “Death spells are coming down/Don’t go outside,” sings Becker, “Helpless for higher ground/Helpless to hide.” Peralta’s resonator guitar plinks banjo-like over Becker’s acoustic guitar, rising from the hush. “The air is thickening/Nowhere to fly/Songbirds are suffering/ Plucked from the sky.” Other instruments join the mix—electronic chirps, a xylophone, what sounds like wind chimes, vocal harmonies—as Becker’s voice rises, cutting to the heart of the song: “Here’s the knife/Belly is waiting now open wide.” Not content to be merely a death dirge, the song opens itself as the instruments swirl, the volume rising, the music gaining urgency. “Well wake up,” sings Becker, “feeding an inclement fire little pinecones.” The drums alter their beat, growing steadier, the xylophone ringing out a new melody, backed by the piano and guitar, as the song achieves its climax. It’s an invocation, a refusal to give up or give in to the melancholy, building a small fire to warm oneself.
With a new label and an album in the works, “Death Spells” is a reintroduction to Goon. It’s a song haunted by loss, but it doesn’t linger in the misery. The act of creation is never hopeless. It suggests something beyond doom. A light left lingering, a new fire kindled.
・Listen: open.spotify.com/artist/4NXLuWrShwLG44Had3qhw5