GOAT – Let it Burn (Single Review by Matt Crawley)

So……….where do I start. Well let me just say that I believe this to be the best song I’ve heard since Arctic Monkeys released R U Mine? early in 2012. To put this into context, when that track was released I DJed in a converted toilet (Ginglik, Shepherds Bush) at The Rifles aftershow party and that night I played R U Mine? 5 times in total!  I’m DJing at Club 85 in a few weeks and this will certainly be on the playlist, and every single DJ playlist until I hang up the headphones. 

The other guys at Transmission HQ will tell you that I make sweeping statements all of the time, but this time its for real!, This is the best song in the last 6 years. Let me explain why as I obviously listen to the track whilst writing this.

Now I know absolutely noting about the band Goat but after a quick bit of research I find out they are a mask wearing, experimental, psychedelic rock band from Gothenburg in Sweden who’s back story claims they are just one of many incarnations over the last 30 years of a group from a small, voodoo-worshipping northern town named Korpilombolo. Now as interesting as this is, it doesn’t tell you quite how I feel about this track. And boy does it make me feel something. I feel like the coolest mother fucker to ever grace the planet when I hear it. Not many songs in the last 5 years or so make me feel anything (see Better Man and Iron Sky by Paolo Nutini, R U Mine? by AM and Her by The Scruff) but this does! 

The tribal drums from the very first second beat the rhythm of my soul, the almost banshee vocals pierce it and a jazz flute solo that Ron Burgundy would be proud of lets it pour through me, and we are not even a minute into the track yet. Then bam, this fuzzy distorted guitar starts playing a dreamy almost Hendrix-like riff and that’s the exact moment I feel like strutting down the street like a bad mother fucker from Pulp Fiction. And it doesn’t relent for the next 5 minutes. The final two minutes introduce some climactic strings making it a finale to calm myself down again before I obviously hit the rewind button for the 10^thtime.

The back catalogue is just as good with stand out tracks like Run To Your Mama and Talk To God. Goat headline Stage 2 at Citadel Festival in London on July 15^thand if you’re going you would be absolutely mental to miss it. 

Anyway go listen to the track now for the best 6 minutes of your day.