On their latest release, "Pickle," Van Goat presents a genre-smashing tornado that feels at once like a punk-rock jazz odyssey stuffed into the fever dream of a garage band. "Pickle" plunges you into a free fall of rotted glory, tumbling down stair-step guitar licks yanked from a punk rock pit in purgatory itself. Then just as your face is about to melt completely off, the track makes a hard left into an improbably smooth-jazz B section, part elevator music, part hallucination. Spearheading the raucousness is the singer and trombonist Lindsay Alexis, whose performance straddles catharsis and comedy.
She channels that sort of unhinged clarity you achieve when you've argued yourself into a circle and, instead of losing your mind, laugh in its face. Alexis describes the song as an emotional stretch, poking fun at toxic cycles to defuse them. The sardonic bite also lends "Pickle" a therapeutic edge beneath its quirky sheen. Every member of Van Goat plays as though they're simultaneously showing off and blowing off steam. Derek Burle's bass playing is caffeinated and creative, like it's dodging mines across the fretboard. Its drummer, Taylor Moxon, thus has something of an animal strategy, stalking the rhythm like a predator. And Ben Einstein's keyboards shift from explosive to breezy, from farfisa flair in one moment to glockenspiel whimsy the next. And when the guitarist Aidan Ward bites into the B-section, it's as if he's soloing in an as-yet unnamed language.
Recorded in a worn-out basement and with Chris Nishimoto at the off-brand boards, "Pickle" maintains its honest grittiness. The mix by Chris Hughes and mastering by Piper Payne crank up the live-wire energy, allowing every oddball detail to punch through. Even the cover art for the single, a nod to the baseball term for a player caught between bases, adds to the overriding theme of the song that strange, farcical, no-win space where you're pinned, struggling, and somehow still laughing. "Pickle" is a spectacle. And for some reason, despite all of its craziness, Van Goat still gets you to hum along with the promise, "Everything will all be fine."
Discover Van Goat on Instagram