And they just keep getting better! Swedish psych-funksters, Goat, mix a monster mash of musical motifs on their eponymous 6th album.
Release Date: 11th October 2024
Label: Rocket Recordings
Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital
A RITUALISTIC, TRANSCENDENTAL EXPERIENCE…
Let’s be honest – Swedish psych-funksters, Goat, are established favourites of ours. We enthused mightily over their 2022 album, Oh Death – one of our 2022 Albums of the Year – recommending that, wherever Goat may be headed on that mach-speed space voyage of theirs, you’d be well-advised to join them. More recently – in April 2023 – we caught their show at the Manchester Club Academy, after which, our reviewer was moved to confirm that a Goat show is, indeed, a “…ritualistic, transcendental experience,” just like it says on the tin.
And the Goat voyage has shown no signs of slowing down; since that Manchester show, there’s been another album – 2023’s Medicine – earlier this year, they released their dark, atmospheric, soundtrack to Shane Meadows’ engaging 3-part BBC TV drama, The Gallows Pole. Now they’re back again with another new album – their 6th – the eponymously-titled Goat. And it’s a beaut. It seems that, in the Goat world, things just keep getting better…
GOAT BROTH
In case you’ve missed them so far – and I can’t believe that there are many ATB browsers that have – Goat are a musical collective based in Gothenburg, Sweden, although they originate in Korpilombolo, a hamlet in Norrbotten County, right up there in the Arctic north of Sweden. That’s probably important, because the band’s home territory is a land rich in legend, and those legends undoubtedly spill over into Goat’s music, a heady blend that takes in funk, voodoo and witchcraft influences and laces that brew with a hefty dose of psychedelia. You’ll familiar with the basic ingredients of the Goat broth, but you may not yet have had the pleasure of tasting the finished product…
A LITTLE AFRICAN MAGIC
The heady mix of sharp, punchy funk and psychedelic exploration is there right from the start in One More Death, the album’s electrifying opening track. The fuzz-drenched guitar sound is stunning, the – slightly distant – vocals are impassioned and, somehow, the drumbeat manages to keep pace with it all. And, it seems, the band have been having a good ol’ listen to The Doors, if that magnificent organ tone is anything to go by…
Before I even picked up the album, I was warned that I might hear a few strains of early Funkadelic in Goat’s music and, sure enough, here they are in the excellent Goatbrain, one of several true highlights on the album. The driving, shuffling drumbeat and the sharp, clanky guitars are incisively funky and the band’s Voodoo leanings are clearly apparent, especially after the flute kicks in to add a little African magic.
Goat are masters at settling their listeners down into a warm, cozy, comfort zone before waking them from any reverie they might be entering with a solid dollop of weirdness, and that’s precisely what they do in Fool’s Journey. Gentle flute sets a deceptively pastoral mood but, somehow, the wary listener can sense that something dramatic is lurking just around the corner. And, sure enough, there it is: the soundscape builds with oriental tinkles and dramatic piano notes, before the whole thing explodes into a dreamland of ambient noise.
IS MR ZAPPA IN THE ROOM?
But it’s probably when they revert to psychedelic funk that Goat really set the pace and that’s what they do so stunningly with the wonderful Dollar Bill – possibly my favourite track on the album. The vibrant guitar had me looking around to see if Frank Zappa had entered the room, a sense that was further compounded by the impassioned vocals. Guitar and bass both head off into space on their own separate assignments – and they manage to keep firmly in touch throughout – on what is surely one of the best pieces of music that I’ve heard all year. And WHAT an ending! If old Beelzebub played guitar, THAT’s the sound he would most likely make.
Goat wear their love of hip hop proudly on their sleeve for Zombie, a solidly funky number, propelled along by a tight, punchy drum/bass figure. With a piano loop wrapped around beat, you could be forgiven for thinking that Method Man might pop up with a bar or two. The rhythms once again recall Africa and the nasal-toned guitar (or is it a synth??) is delightful.
THE OUROBOROS
The last word that any writer would use to describe the music of Goat is “derivative,” yet influences, real or imagined are peppered throughout their work, and that’s particularly the case with Frisco Beaver, in which blends snatches of Zappa, Santana, Osibisa, The Doors and Dr John into a show-stopper of a tune, before the dreamy contemplations of The All is the One signpost the way to the album’s epic conclusion…
… a conclusion that brings everything that has passed so far into some form of order. Ouroboros.
The album’s press release defines The Ouroboros – and its significance to the Goat project generally and to this album specifically as: “The icon of the snake or dragon eating its own tail [which] appears to some to be a statement of the brutality of nature. To others of a Gnostic disposition it symbolizes the duality of the divine and earthly in mankind. But, most commonly, it’s taken simply to mean the endless cycles of death and rebirth that characterize life on this planet. As such, it’s an image that looms large in the world of Goat, the ever-mysterious and endlessly revivifying collective marks another adventure above and beyond this particular plane of reality.”
That’s the verbal rationale for Ouroboros, the album’s breathless, lighting-paced and unremittingly funky closing track. Musically, it’s probably best described as: 7+ minutes of ecstatic, hypnotic cacophony. Goat: A monster mash of musical motifs? Perhaps. A stunner of an album? You Bet!
GOAT ON TOUR
And, if you’re enticed by what you’ve read, or if you like what you hear, you’ll be interested to know that Goat are on tour in the UK during the next few weeks. You can catch them at the following venues performing their unique, live rituals.
24 October – London, Troxy
25 October – Bristol, 02 Academy
26 October – Manchester, Academy 1
14 November – Norwich, UEA
15 November – Oxford, 02 Academy
16 November – Nottingham, Rock City
Watch the official video to Goatbrain – a track from the album – here:
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