Interview: The Goods

Rob Good Discusses His Band's Debut Album

The Goods (L-to-R): Rob Good and Cherron Arens. Photo by Corey Poluk.

The Goods’ debut album is one of 2025’s most highly anticipated guitar pop releases, and it delivers.

Following the enthusiastic response to their 4-song EP in 2023, Rob Good and his collaborators Gabriel Monnot (guitar) and Cherron Arens (bass) went into the studio to record a full-length follow up for Dandy Boy Records. Good wrote many of the songs over the previous couple of years, including a few that predate the EP.

“After the pandemic I found myself in a highly creative period, and in the ensuing years I’ve found myself constantly writing and demoing things. It’s just been a matter of picking and fleshing out the best ones,” Good told me for the interview below.

The Goods spread their wings on Don’t Spoil The Fun, often favoring melody and sunny jangle over the driving backbeat energy of their previous release.

“Recording the album became an exercise in evolving the sound and finding a new path forward. At some point I hit a wall and needed to take a break, clear my head, stretch out, and try some different things,” Good said. During that “break,” Good recorded a yet-to-be-released album, as well as a single and an LP with his other band Ryli, and engineered records for The 1981 and Joel Cusumano.

“When I finally came back around to finish this record, I had some distance from its initial beginnings and was re-inspired and influenced by all that other music I’d worked on in the interim. I ended up re-tracking nearly the entire record with the exception of Cherron’s bass lines and Gabe’s guitars. I think the result is still a high-energy guitar record, but a more open, sparkly, melodic sound.

I caught up with Good by email to discuss the upcoming release of Don’t Spoil The Fun on Oct. 24, ask about his major influences, and find out what’s next for The Goods.

---

Like, Comment & Share To Help Other Music Lovers Find RTL.

---

Rob Good Interview

Congrats on the great debut album. Can you tell me a little about how these songs were recorded?

Rob Good: Thank you! We recorded them all in my studio, which is the same spot we recorded our previous EP, though I’ve made some upgrades since then. The record was mixed and mastered by Bart Thurber, who I was stoked to work with—I’m a big fan of his work with The Neutrals and Owen Adair Kelley of Cyan Pools.

We tracked many of the songs several times before we found the right approach—the benefit of having your own studio is that you can take your time to get it right, but you need to be careful not to spin your wheels too much. I’m probably guilty of a little too much wheel-spinning in regards to this record, but I’m happy with where it ended up.

You announced Don’t Spoil The Fun with the lead single “April Fools.” Why was that the right song to launch with?

Rob Good: It’s the opening track on the album and it just seemed like one that was catchy and immediate, and it’s also nice and short which I always like for a single. A couple years ago when I was playing some of my demos for Bobby Martinez from Dandy Boy, he called this one out as one of his favorites. At the time I had considered it kind of a trifle because it began its life several years prior as a little acoustic nursery rhyme, sort of like ‘Jennifer Juniper’ by Donovan, which I think you can still hear in the vocal melody even though the presentation is much different now.

I got into The Goods thanks to your excellent 4-song EP. How do you think your songwriting and sound have evolved?

Rob Good: When the band first formed, it had been a long time since I’d written songs and fronted a band, so stylistically I was very much picking up where I’d left off years ago and trying to figure out where to go next. I think that led the EP to be a little more loud and aggressive, which also suited the lineup at that time. We tried that approach initially for a lot of the songs on the new record, but it was really clear that something needed to change to make room for the songs to breathe.

Some of the songs on the record actually pre-date the EP, or were written immediately after, and just took awhile to evolve into their final form. ‘Photograph,’ ‘Me and My Ghost,’ and ‘Sarah Says’ have been in the live set since our first show, for instance.

Speaking of “Photograph,” that one falls somewhere between Matthew Sweet and Fountains of Wayne to my ears. Would you consider those artists influences? Who else?

Rob Good: I would definitely consider Matthew Sweet an influence—I think he’s highly underrated. Beyond that, I have to out myself as having a somewhat cursory knowledge of a lot of true ‘power pop.’ Most of my influences are British Invasion bands like The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, and The Zombies, along with ‘70s guitar-oriented rock like Tom Petty and Cheap Trick, early punk (I’m a huge Ramones fan), and of course plenty of ‘90s stuff like Green Day which I think is mostly evident in the energy and the song structures.

Songs like “Aurora” and “Sarah Says” are bit more rootsy. Do you think about genre much when you’re writing songs?

Rob Good: I don’t think about genre too much. I never really even conceived of the group as a power pop band per se, though I realize that’s what it ended up being. I’m just kinda searching for melodies, chord progressions, and sonics that are appealing and interesting to me. I grew up on Tom Petty and The Eagles, so I know that Americana sound was definitely a formative influence. A Scottish friend of mine once told me, ‘If you guys turned the volume down, you’d be a country band!’ I don’t know if I totally agree with that but I can see what he’s talking about.

I love the jangly ‘60s groove on “Out Of The Blue.” What was the inspiration for that song?

Rob Good: That song is about trying to find common ground with someone—trying trying trying, fighting fighting fighting—then all of a sudden the clouds part and you’re connected again. Maybe because you’re actually back on the same page, or maybe because you’re just so exhausted that you decide to stuff it down or let it go for the sake of getting along.

Musically, this one lived a couple lives before it ended up in its final form. It was written before our debut EP, and recorded several times in several different iterations, but it wasn’t until the last go at it that we finally got it right. The first treatment was kind of Ramones-y, and it took some time to open it up and add more jangle, groove, and melody. I had a vague idea of turning it into a ‘60s, high energy, mod-garage kind of thing, which is sort of where it ended up. The guitar solo in the middle was inspired by the sitars on ‘Love You To’ by The Beatles.

The final track, “Keep It Safe,” is one of my favorites from the new album. Why was that one the right closer?

Rob Good: I’m glad you like that one! It’s one of my favorites, and it was one of the very last songs we recorded for the record. We cut several songs during the making of the album that weren’t working out, weren’t the right vibe, or just needed more time to develop, and we found ourselves short on runtime for a full-length, so I started going back through my demos and this one turned up. I was like, ‘Why wasn’t this on the record in the first place?’

The recording came together really quickly. The instrumental coda at the end was originally from another song that was planned to close out the record, but ended up getting cut. I found that the coda grafted so well onto ‘Keep It Safe’ that it was like, ‘Well we’ve found our closer!’ There’s also something about the lyrics that seemed right for the end of a record—‘Find yourself, find your place, keep it safe’ seemed like a good sendoff.

Any plans to tour for Don’t Spoil The Fun?

Rob Good: I’d love to, though nothing is currently booked. I’ve done quite a bit of touring in previous projects and I can speak from experience that touring the United States in particular is really difficult, and it’s only getting harder. We’ll probably line up some regional stuff along the West Coast at some point, and it would be great to make it to Europe one day!

If I got in the van with The Goods, what would I hear on the stereo?

Rob Good: I’m currently obsessed with Simon and Garfunkel, particularly the album Bridge Over Troubled Water, as well as Donovan, Wings, early Beegees, Harry Nillson, and the first couple George Harrison solo records. There’s a good chance we’d also be spinning any number of other Dandy Boy artists like Joel Cusumano who has a record coming out—that I also recorded and performed on—which is stellar.

---

---