Album of the Week: Goblin

By now Odd Future are pretty much the biggest new thing in music, having just finished their first full-fledged European tour. They incited a bit of a riot at the Camden Crawl, where they outshined every other band present, and have an established and dedicated fanbase that just keeps on growing. Goblin marks a clear musical progression for the leader of the Wolf Gang, as he pushes his Neptunes-influenced minimalistic indie hip-hop to brave weird worlds. Tracks like ‘Yonkers’ and ‘Troncat’ retain the same visceral anger and insanity that fans know and love, but it is on the heavily R&B-tinged ‘She’, the manic and funky ‘Transylvania’ (produced by Left Brain), and in the strange beauty of ‘Analog’, that Tyler really outdoes himself. On this album more than ever before Tyler separates the different sides of his musical persona (Wolf Haley, Ace Creator and Troncat) onto distinct tracks, resulting in what could be considered a concept album: Tyler discovers the pitfalls of becoming an instant celebrity, questions his abilities, falls prey to his weaknesses and ends up shooting every member of the Golf Wang (metaphorically?) before finally discovering himself. Bring on Wolf.