The Ohio trio Golomb exude the magical, freewheeling energy that you associate with ‘90s slacker rock, where anything feels possible as long as it’s made with heart. Their second record The Beat Goes On is a dazzling, fuzzy, weird and moving collection of songs that slides through garage rock, proto-punk, dream pop, country, lo-fi indie and even dub reggae with zero pretence and total joy. Opener The Beat Goes On kicks things off with the gritty simplicity of The Stooges with blown-out fuzz, trashy percussion, and effortlessly catchy vocals from Mickey and Xenia Shuman. Their chemistry shines throughout the record with real warmth in how their voices intersect.

From there The Beat Goes On becomes an eclectic journey. Staring is a loose lo-fi gem that recalls Pavement at their most casual, whilst Embracing Humanness is a strange and gorgeous curveball with no drums, a strange metre, and dreamlike vocals. Pressure is a burst of raucous energy showing the band can let rip when they want to, and Dog brazenly lifts its sonic palette from The Velvet Underground whilst managing to nod to The Stooges, Sly and The Family Stone, and the entire countercultural spirit of the late ‘60. It’s a perfect little love letter to an entire decade distilled into four minutes of beautiful noise, wearing its influences without being derivative. The Other Side of the Earth is a reggae tune complete with one-drop rhythms and dub effects that ends with the band cracking up and laughing at themselves. The Sad Song is a hazy country ballad, Be Here Now channels the mellowest side of Meat Puppets, and the closing track Sweet Release (Ain’t No Devil) veers into ramshackle country swing, complete with a fiddle. For all this variety, The Beat Goes On doesn’t feel like a playlist of disconnected ideas. Golomb are pulling from a bag of extremely cool references to make their own house of sound, which is at once raucous, gentle, joyful, strange, and entirely their own.