Lost Goat

The Dirty Ones (Tee Pee)
by Brian Varney

Heard a tune by this trio awhile back on the TV Eye video, thought it sucked (it sounded like a watered-down rewrite of “Mississippi Queen,” as I recall), and pushed ’em to the back of my mind. However, you can only hear a band’s name reverently uttered so many times without getting curious, even if you’ve already made up your mind about ’em. A few hundred raves later, I decided to give Lost Goat another chance.

Granted, I knew going in that a lot of said attention was no doubt due to the fact that two of the members are hot chicks, and if there’s one thing that’ll get you noticed in the sausagefest that is heavy rock, it’s having females in your band, whether or not your band’s any good.

Imagine my surprise, then, when The Dirty Ones completely flattened me the first time I played it. Treading some odd middle ground between angular, atmospheric indie rock and floorboard-rumbling ’70s-flavored hard blues rock, Lost Goat manage to make music that’s as familiar and comfortable as your favorite worn-out pair of sneakers, yet also fresh and interesting. This ain’t gonna impress your art-school friends like Fantômas or something, but it’s different-sounding enough to make you wave away the cloud of bong smoke filling the room, stumble over to the stereo and say “What is this?”

Even if you don’t give a toss about how “original” a band is, chances are you’ll still find something to like here. There’s a bevy of fine tunes, especially “The Hanging Tree,” the kinda song you end up playing four or five times in a row ’cause you don’t want it to end. Guitarist Eric Peterson (I want his job) is mostly responsible for the band’s otherness, alternating deftly between clean, quietly strummed passages (“The Drifter”) and the greasy riffs that are the bread and butter of any self-respecting heavy rock guitarist. Oh yeah, and Tina Gordon is one of the best drummers I’ve ever heard.
(PO Box 20307 New York, NY 10009)