Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 4

If we keep introducing these songs by saying "This isn't necessarily their best" it might lead you to wonder why we put so many also-rans into our Top Seven list and dismiss the whole list altogether. But in the case of Father John Misty and Courtney Barnett, the selected songs were perfect encapsulations of one aspect or another of the respective artist's work.

Then we've got London's Goat Girl.  Their debut, self-titled album is one of our favorites of the year, but which song to pick for our year-end list?  All the songs are great but no two sound alike, even though they're all clearly identifiable as Goat Girl songs, and picking anyone of them, the one where they do "that," leaves out another song where they do "the other thing."  The Man is as good a pick as any off the album, but the whole LP really needs to be heard to be appreciated.

To be quite honest, the whole album is one big, chaotic, lo-fi mess, but that's what makes it so great. Goat Girl are apparently four barely-twenty-somethings (they were signed two years ago as teenagers).  They play slacker, who-gives-a-fuck, punk rock and yet somehow it seems they hit the nail on the head with every song. It's just that you didn't know there were nails there, or that it felt so good to hit them.  How'd they do that? Some songs are straight-up punk ravers, others have a definite country twang, and some sound like some sort of demented swamp-boogie stomp.  There's 19 songs on their debut album and they all sound different, and I honestly think they came up with that many ideas by not thinking too hard about any of it and not taking a lick of it seriously - did we mention the album is also frequently hilarious?

Goat Girl is probably as good a reason why our list in Top Seven and not a more traditional Top 5 - five of our Top 5 are pretty predictable and safe bets (come on, is anybody surprised to see Father John Misty and Courtney Barnett in a year-end, Best Of list?), but there's no way we're going to make a list that leaves out Marc Ribot and Goat Girl.

Fuck it, words are pointless.  Here's two more Goat Girl songs to illustrate why they're on our Best Of list.  You can pick whichever one you want, or any other Goat Girl song for that matter, for the No. 4 spot. I don't care.