Goat: Goat - Album Review (2025)

Goat: Goat Goat: Goat - Album Review (1)

Rocket Recordings

All Formats available at Sister Ray

Out Now

Swedish purveyors of psychedelic/experimental/blues/folk/afrobeat rock Goat have returned with their sixth studio album, a shorter and sharper shock of funk-infused bliss to hibernate the Winter blues away. MK Bennett listens in.

They do like it a little historical, Goat From the Mystical Realism of Shane Meadows’ Gallows Pole to the recent single and stand-out album track Ouroboros; they are that rare band that sounds somehow stargazed yet standing in a freshly dug grave, sparkling with glitter and dripping with dirt and blood. There’s a heavy Pagan aesthetic and influence in how they present themselves, but Satan is about as present as Jesus. Ouroboros, generally a snake though occasionally a dragon, rounded into a circle and eating its own tail, is considered a symbol of wholeness or infinity. However, it could reasonably be seen as a negative too, chasing one’s tail, life’s repeated patterns with the same result, a standing start from the same position—an ovation lacking purpose, though two things can be true at once.

One of the hallmarks of the Shane Meadows canon is the use of music to enhance a scene, especially in something like Dead Man’s Shoes, where the music is almost its own offscreen character, adding to the feeling of panic slightly out of reach, scratching its own skin, gnawing at buried bones. While GOAT may ultimately have more in common with Jodorowsky and the Holy Mountain in terms of obvious lineage between the cinematic and the musical, the sense of a longing and a beautiful unease is strong with them.

The new album, Goat, starts in a conventional enough way when a classic rock riff kicks in, and what turns out to be One More Death then turns into the Grateful Dead via a strong Janes Addiction vibe, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. A recurring musical theme is Led Zeppelin, specifically the first three albums, a mix of the urban and the pastoral, the rural and the concrete, and it’s all there in the fantastic opener. Goatbrain follows, a funked up and slinky affair where the vocal is the only recognisable element from the previous song, where The Skatalites jam with Funkadelic in a Moroccan bazaar. At this point, you realise that there may be a more streamlined, less jam-oriented feel, which is a shame for those of us who adore it but may be necessary for the band’s progression/longevity.

Goat: Goat - Album Review (2)

Fools Journey starts in a country garden of indeterminate postcode when a big piano drops in and enhances something already beautiful. This fantastic intro becomes Dollar Bill, brutally funkdafied and rhythmic, Wah Wah upfront like an Ike Turner nightmare, a cyclic thing of joy, a summer’s day spent chasing the rain. Zombie is nearly a pop song but for the distorted/wah-wah bass solo two minutes in. By Goat standards, and despite its occasional departure to outer space, this is a lot more pop than previous records, but in a good way. It is tighter, more concise, full of hooks, musical and vocal while maintaining the more psychedelic heights you have come to expect. It could be an instrumental hip-hop track, Blockhead or Dabrye without the vocal.

The wonderfully named Frisco Beaver is the sound of slow camels crossing a desert, Nigerian funk from a radio in another room, taut with the fat cut off, unapologetically heading for the Africa 70 with Fela Kuti and Ginger Baker. The All Is One starts as a lament and finishes as an elegy in a different song, Folky and pagan as the guitars float, we find ourselves at the Kosmiche funk of Ouroboros, driving towards the future drum sound of perfect rhythm, the theme from Slow Horses had Jagger been unavailable, a band out of time but conversely completely of their time. And all you can reasonably do is press play again.

The nuance will require some volume on your part, but the neighbours won’t mind, not this time.

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All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram

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Goat: Goat - Album Review (2025)
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