Album Review: Goat by Goat

Following their recent folk-flavoured output (2023's "Medicine", and this year's soundtrack to BBC drama The Gallows Pole), the Swedish psychedelic rock collective have built upon their cult following of genre-smashing sound and fiercely enigmatic identity. With their latest eponymous sixth album, GOAT, they lighten the tone somewhat of their music and venture back into the enchanted territory that infectiously grabs the listener up for some hip-shaking. From "One More Death" and "Goatbrain" it's immediately apparent that the livelier, brighter tones and polyrhythms in this self-titled outing are less about incessant or pounding drums and sludgy guitars.

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A seductively shallow psych-groove triumph Don't take me for a fool, I know as well as anyone psychedelia is dead, dead, dead, as much as anything in the age where everything's alive, revived, resurrected, rejuvenated, reborn so flat and glittering all over your computer screen. To talk about what psychedelia was when it was alive is to open another whole can of worms or kettle of fish or other off-putting food-adjacent item. But damn if Goat doesn't feel real, if this doesn't feel like something that exists in worlds coated in mud-daubing and highway scent, smoke and incense and some of the tastiest, most pungent guitar-work this side of the flower-strewn highways.

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The mystique of Goat--self-proclaimed psych warriors--is on full display on their new self-titled album as it skips on the edge of the surreal, blending a raw, tribal energy into its unique and varied rock soundscape. Each track is its own strange trip that merges psychedelia, and even the occasional cow bell, with elements of rock and folk, creating a tapestry that flutters around the edges of multiple genres with an otherworldly underbelly. Although not quite the unguided frenzy of freestyle jazz or the wildness of extended improvisations as jam bands, Goat wades in waters similar to each with a whirlwind of hypnotic rhythms and swirling guitars.

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Wither goest thou, GOAT, into the inky night? The enigmatic Swedish psych outfit seemed to call it quits after their aptly-titled 2016 effort 'Requiem', but the band's second arc has brought a slew of riches. The intense comeback 'Oh Death' was followed by two album projects in 12 months - the transcendental 'Medicine', and their much-hailed score for a telly adaptation of Ben Myers' work The Gallows Pale. Self-titled, GOAT's latest eponymous feast is a kind of an ur-GOAT statement - frenzied rhythms and bullish guitars, it's a work that not-so-much breaks on through to the other side, but demolishes the walls, the doors, the jambs, the windows, and Lord knows what else.

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