CLASH:
When Goat first emerged caterwauling from the depths of Scandinavia half a decade ago, they were a shock to the system. Their debut album, ‘World Music’, was a resplendent globe-trotting trip of a listen, their live shows a manic ritual worship at the feet of their twin voodoo priestesses, and nowhere else was there anything quite like it.
In the years that followed, psychedelic music experienced its latest revival, and in Goat’s wake came reams of artists with a similar mix of heady riffs and fusion grooves, their previously unfamiliar aesthetic, if not outright copied, clearly bearing its influence on those that followed. By the time the band’s sophomore LP ‘Commune’ was released two years ago, though still armed with the same hectic brilliance as on their debut the mysterious Swedes’ power to shock and awe was clearly fading.
Goat’s second album succeeded on the strength of its songs alone, but now, on its follow-up, there’s a sense they can’t get away with the same tricks three times in a row. How refreshing, then, that in response to what was a creeping sense of predictability, that on ‘Requiem’ the band have taken a total left turn. Where once they were detached and unreachably alien in tone, now Goat have reached out their arms on a warm, bright, even uplifting new record, laced in flutes and mantras of goodwill.
Read the full review here: Clash
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MUSIC OMH
On paper, Goat sound like a comically terrible idea for a band. They perform in masks and flowing robes, and claim to hail from the remote northern Swedish village of Korpilombolo, where they emerged less as a band than as a collective which has supposedly handed its identity down to new members over the decades.
Their line-up is a mystery, and Goat give the impression that different members drift in and out of recording sessions: anyone who happens to be there when the band is making music is part of the band. This might sound like a bad parody of a bunch of amateurish hippies making unfocussed music, but the origin story is almost certainly not true, and the music is too good to have been played and recorded by so loose a collective.
Full Review Here: Music OMH
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