The Hague trio Prince S. and the goat lets you listen while dancing and dance while listening ★★★★☆

Up-and-coming band Prins S. en de geit had not yet released an album, but this summer they already performed at festivals such as Lowlands and Appelpop. Great choice! The debut album Red stand go hard confirms what the singles already hinted at. With a sharp lyricism and a range of electronic pop genres, the trio from The Hague lets you listen while dancing and dance while listening. Composer Marne Miesen plays guitar and Daniel Ortgiess makes the beats on which singer Scott Beekhuizen treats you hypothermically to his accurate lyrics. In the title track, for example, in which the romance of shared hardship is sketched with ‘a bowl of mayonnaise with two spoons’. In the vintage synthpop of Guest list Beekhuizen describes in a few lines the discomfort of every nobody who has ever begged in line in front of the club to be allowed in. ‘In front of a fence/ you stand because you/ have been forgotten/ unknown. And now you are / here you end up / are still / not recognized.’

Striking observations melt together almost carelessly into rhythmic poetry. The dry, articulate delivery hovers between rap and beat poetry, but the beats themselves have taken off. In Can’t fix you echoes the virtuoso rhyme of Drs P, but is sawn, buzzed and sanded in a gabberian way.

At times, Prince S. and the Goat is sublime. About the menacing, dark techno of Night Beekhuizen describes a hallucinatory club experience. ‘There are birds flying through the air here. Snakes are crawling on the floor. Anyone have another drink? My mouth is much too dry.’ Spiderfish on ecstasy. The band will perform at Noorderslag on January 21.