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Album reviews Music

Goat’s third album, Requiem, is the perfect soundtrack to pretending you’re in a cult

Swedish psych rock collective Goat walk an extremely fine line between novelty act and serious music. Their blatantly preposterous backstory claiming they are members of an obscure voodoo sect from northern Sweden is a silly starting point for a band, but the joke also provides the framework for some truly interesting and charmingly odd sounds. 

The band perform wearing pseudo-tribal masks, refuse to give their names for interviews and claim to be a leaderless ever-changing collective that’s existed for decades. They embrace the term “world music” and have unsurprisingly been criticized for cultural appropriation. However, you could argue that they’re not so much appropriating other cultures as much as lifting from Western hippy commune bands – in a sense, appropriating the appropriators. 

Or maybe it’s all just an excuse to combine psychedelic rock and Middle Eastern and African influences without having to confront the issue. Whatever the answer, the members are experts at dodging questions about their intentions. 

Requiem is their third album, which they’ve described as their “folk” record. This means a lot more acoustic instruments, though there are still plenty of fuzz-guitar freak-outs. They sound most comfortable when they give in to their rock impulses, happily droning away like Spacemen 3 with a bongo section. 

Requiem is a double album but only 13 songs long, which means you’re in store for plenty of extended instrumental jams. Those chugging epics help establish the hazy mood and create plenty of atmosphere, but the best moments come when Goat attempt more conventional song structures. The perfect soundtrack to pretending you’re in a cult, which is likely a lot more fun than actually joining one.

Top track: Try My Robe

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