Goat Girl + Sneaks

Now this is an odd one for me. Usually, I go to a gig and get overwhelmed with enthusiasm for a band and artist only to have that enthusiasm diminish as time goes by and hindsight kicks in. This one was sorta the opposite as the gig kinda left me a bit underwhelmed.

First up is Baltimore’s Sneaks AKA Eva Moolchan. Using voice, live bass guitar, drum machine and laptop triggered samples and loops, the music veers from dubby, funky, punk-indie-rap to grimy rap and hip-hop. At its best, elements of the likes of Talking Heads, Slits and Fever Ray merge to form something quite enthralling. Those moments are, however, relatively few in the set. There are too many short tunes that are more sketches and skits than actual songs and the more straight ahead rap stuff seems a bit derivative and clichéd for me. That said, Sneaks is clearly talented, it takes guts to get up on stage alone and I’ll be interested to see how her music develops.

Goat Girl have garnered a fair amount of media interest in a relatively short time. It is not just in the specialist music press and online blogs either, with even the broadsheets taking an interest. Of course, that interest can be a poisoned chalice. Certainly, I went to the gig on the basis of the band’s reputation and knowing next to nothing about the music. The first couple of songs are a pleasant surprise, being shoegaze of the type that Swervedriver and Ride specialised in back in the 90s. Then things go off-kilter and oddball. There’s some killer surf guitar in the style of Dick Dale, touches of the southern rock of Drive-By Truckers and Alabama Shakes and a hint of the cosmic Americana of Gram Parsons or Connan Mockasin. Then there’s leftfield experimental pop that recalls Blur, Cardiacs and Super Furry Animals along with the lo-fi of Half Man Half Biscuit and (long-forgotten proto-riot grrrls) UT.