Ship Of Fools/Light As A Feather (RSD 25)

The past year has been one of evolution for Goat. 2024’s eponymous album found the band refining their fuzz, dipping deeper into ‘70s psych-funk, and reconnecting with the sonic sear that’s long been their guiding light. Always consummate collaborators, they capped off 2024 eyeing the future with a 7” single that paired their heat with hip-hop, working with acclaimed Ugandan artist MC Yallah. The band often used the short format as a springboard for collaboration and experimentation, and after singles with Yallah, Al Lover, and Bonnacons of Doom, Goat cues up a double-A doozy that reconnects them with longtime Gothenburg friends Graveyard.

For a new Record Store Day single, the bands blend their sounds into a twin token of sweat and singe. Born out of a history of house jams at Goat HQ, the single unwinds Graveyard’s more meticulous nature. “Ship of Fools” unleashes a tsunami of sound, guitars barrelling down on the listener with ill intent. The wave crests and quenches, though, leaning into the soul-soaked direction of Graveyard’s latest album, “6”. Head to head, the bands dig towards a stadium sound that’s still slicked with the swagger of the ‘70s but rolled in more of Graveyard’s grandeur than Goat’s eclectic grit.

The flip side lights up the speakers, less dense than anything either band has hooked into for some time. The jammy approach that inspired the session pays off throughout “Light as a Feather,” soaking up prime-period Stones if they’d aimed for the heart of the sun with Father Yod in the driver’s seat. Sloughing off the shackles of verse/chorus/verse structure, the song picks up mid-ecstatic peak, the listener already in thrall to the groove, simmering in the sway-along harmonies before an acid-butter burner of a solo sends the whole thing rippling out into the cosmos.