New LP from Swedish band Goat is lively, fun, mellow, and totally fuzzed and funk’d up!
Goat by Goat, released October 2024.
Despite the apparently eponymous title this is Goat’s sixth studio album – the first being World Music in 2012. Their music is variously described as alternative/indie rock, experimental rock, neo-psychedelia and even indie folk, none of which do justice to their sound. The band are anonymous and always perform wearing costumes and masks.
For those of you with eclectic tastes in music and who are perhaps always searching for the next big fusion, this is for you. The merger of sounds and styles here is breathtaking – and usually successful. When I listen to records like this I am often cast back to the heady days of the birth of punk, and in particular that moment when The Damned session on John Peel first bent our heads out of shape – and changed our lives for many years to come. We had not really heard anything quite like it before.
This album has musical styles and changes of pace tripping over each other at a pretty frantic pace, save for a few mellow patches to give your brain a chance to catch up. It is difficult to pick favourites – this is very much an album you can stick with all the way through.
I really like Zombie which, despite the title, I found amusing – in the nicest possible way. There is an early keyboard break that sounds like a very hairy and overweight caterpillar is freaking out on a Stylophone and somehow managing to play all the right notes! The drum solo, if it can be called that, is hilarious and clever too, like a percussionist who has consumed one too many fermented vegetable products has been let loose with a stick and a range of assorted kitchen pots and other utensils. Great!
I have always been a lover of psychedelia, so I suppose Frisco Beaver might be my favourite. This is 60’s basement club with lots of big purple hair and hipsters wearing lurid colours that clash rather than match. Far out.
There are too many styles to mention here – at least in a way that I can do them justice. Parts of the album are acoustic and almost pastoral. Elsewhere there is bass fuzzed-up to the stratosphere. If you like interesting and varied music and are not frightened of something ever-so slightly out-there – this would be an excellent choice.
Bandcamp
https://goat.bandcamp.com/album/goat
Colin Anderson 
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