Review: Goat ‘Goat’

I’ve always been curious how a band decide what song starts an album and how they make their entrance as it can make or break whether the listener likes what they hear or not. A simple observation I know, but upon hearing what appears to be a wooden cart being dragged by a horse, then a strummed guitar, I really had no idea where this was going to end up, so onwards I ploughed.

Halfway through the opening song One More Death it feels like I’m trapped inside of those olds kids toys that you shook as it’s a kaleidoscope of weird sounds and noises and I have an overwhelming urge to grab a tin of something and shake along with the beat. For a band who’ve been going for quite a while, I’ve never come across Goat before and their funky rhythms and beats are very intriguing as second track Goatbrain proves. It’s hypnotic, with the vocals adding more atmosphere to the composition, and it gets your body moving.

Goat, as stated in the press statement, are ‘an ever mysterious and endlessly revivifying collective whose new music marks another adventure above and beyond this particular plane of reality’ and who am I to argue, while the hedonistic feel to their music expands further with Fool’s Journey as you have a sensation of being cast away on a mythical sandy beach. Dollar Bill follows which gives you that filthy, swaggering groove and fuzzy guitar tone that will appeal to audiences far and wide. The music is all about expanding people’s minds with uplifting and changing tempos, and this does that.

trance like, percussion driven masterpiece…

Their style is certainly unique, and I was a bit taken aback by Zombie as it has a delicious hip-hop lick to it that could easily have been a Jurassic 5 or Beastie Boys backing track. It makes you want to nod your head and strut your stuff, all while you run around shouting ‘Zombie!’.

Harking back to their distant past, Frisco Beaver is a literal sequel to Disco Fever from their 2012 album World Music and if ever a song makes you feel trapped in the 1970’s then this is it. I feel like sipping a glass of Babycham, putting on a pair of flared trousers, hitting the local discotheque and dancing the night away to this trance like, percussion driven masterpiece.

Their scintillating and captivating style of music is once more stripped bare on the gentle The All Is One which feels like a meditation session before Ouroboros, the icon of the snake or dragon eating its own tail, kicks in with its mesmerising dance type beat marrying, in their own words, ‘infectious chants to breathless Lalo Schifrin-style breakbeat action’. It’s catchy as hell and I’ll see you on the dancefloor somewhere, sometime and somehow soon.

Label: Rocket Recordings
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Matthew Williams