A Sense of Doubt blog post #3415 - GOAT GIRL - My Second New Favorite Band - Music Monday for 2406.24
24th day of the month in the 24th year.
https://wainsgate.co.uk/goat-girl/
Lottie Pendlebury: vocals, guitar, violin, banjo, bass, synth, mellotron, taishogoto, percussion, organ
Rosy Jones: vocals, drums, piano, banjo, guitar, synth, mellotron, taishogoto, percussion
Holly Mullineaux: vocals, bass, piano, synth, mellotron, taishogoto, percussion
Wainsgate Music is delighted and very excited to welcome the extraordinary Goat Girl to the Chapel. Often described as post-punk, their music is so much more – effortlessly blending rock, folk, synth-pop and more into their highly approachable socio-political songs which are delivered with heaps of style, wit and energy.
The band played their earliest gigs in The Windmill, Brixton naming themselves after comedian Bill Hicks’ character ‘Goat Boy’. They signed a deal with Rough Trade Records in 2016, and put out couple of singles prior to the release of their debut self-titled album two years later.
Their highly acclaimed 2nd album On All Fours came out in 2021 and now the band are touring the UK in March to promote their latest LP Below the Waste to be released on Rough Trade Records in June.
Goat Girl’s approach to Below the Waste is confident and mature, whilst maintaining a playful sense of curiosity and wonderment. Delving deeper into the extremes of their distinctive sound, the band weave effortlessly between disparate elements of expansive noise-rock, delicate folk experimentation and satisfying synth-pop, their unique combination of styles and unorthodox recording methods is a testament to their new collaborative production style.
There is no doubt that Below the Waste is Goat Girl’s most accomplished work to date, and in their boldest iteration yet, they have become the most powerful and authentic version of themselves.
Goat Girl are an indie rock trio that consists of Lottie Pendlebury, Rosy Jones, and Holly Mullineaux. The group have had a couple of member changes since their first LP in 2018, which introduced the world to their ambitiously bluesy post-punk sound. However, there were quite a lot of underwhelming moments on this album, particularly the melodies that often fell flat. The band’s 2021 record, On All Fours, transformed their folky punk sound into an artier rock approach that relied heavily on synths to create these new wave dance-tunes. Unfortunately, this direction sounded much more watered down and less impactful than their debut.
After experimenting with their sound for so long, it is evident that Goat Girl’s third studio LP, Below the Waste, is where they found the sound that they have been looking for. This time we are offered a more fleshed out, psychedelic style. Having been disappointed with the inconsistency of their last couple of albums, I came into this being completely surprised with the improvements at hand; the loud, erratic moments are what really keep my engagement, with some innovative ideas being displayed elsewhere.
The album starts off unpredictably with ‘Reprise’ which is a short, atmospheric interlude that attempts to set the mood of the LP through the use of ambient noise and layered vocals. From there, the track flows into the intoxicating ‘Ride Around’ and ‘Words Fell Out’. The former takes hold of an industrial rock sound that features grungy guitars, and the latter has a more stripped back post-punk feel.
This project often focuses on working through addiction, with the band being very open about having written a couple of the tracks as a result of drummer Rosie Joneses own struggles with addiction and how they needed a lot of support at times. This can be seen through songs such as ‘Words Fell Out’, which features emotive lyrics, such as “I would speak to empty eyes, we’d converse a lot, tell each other what’s been going on” and the track ‘Tcnc’ being an acronym for ‘Take Care Not Crack’.
From there, we smoothly transition to ‘Where’s Ur <3’, which is where the album begins to go slightly downhill. The main issue with this project is how a large proportion of the tracks just seems to drag out, making the whole thing feel like a bit of a slog to get through. Sure, there is the odd gem such as ‘Tonight’, which is one of the more fragile cuts off the album, but at a certain point the slower tracks become a bit too tedious.
Overall, Below the Waste is Goat Girl’s most creative album, leaving behind the more guitar-forward sound they had gotten accustomed to and replacing it with a psychedelic pop feel. There are a few scrappy moments that results in the lack of one’s engagement, but it is very nice to see an improvement in production since the band’s last material, mostly as a result of John “Spud” Murphy taking the role of co-producer and mixing engineer, the same producer behind the sounds of black midi’s work. There is also a better execution of interludes that are scattered throughout the LP that feel like they actually create a type of atmosphere before swiftly moving into the next song. After refining their sound with this record, it would be very intriguing to see what they can provide with future releases.
Goat Girl: Below The Waste – Out 7th June 2024 (Rough Trade)
Take Care: Goat Girl Interviewed
The music of Goat Girl, whether purposefully or not, tends to be plugged into the mood of contemporary Britain. Their first ever single, ‘Country Sleaze’, was released a few months after the UK voted to leave the European Union, with their self-titled debut album following a year and a half later, while the country’s news cycle remained unrelentingly jammed upon Theresa May’s failure to “get Brexit done.” Their second album, ‘On All Fours’, arrived not long after Christmas had been cancelled, during a lockdown period in which the phrase “mutant strain” was perfectly normal and appeared frequently in print. Now, three years later, we have ‘Below The Waste’, released in the midst of a continued cost-of-living crisis and weeks before the commencement of a British election that few could claim to feel especially buzzed about.
‘Below The Waste’ is a record born of hardship. As the country they call home continued along its steady path of decline, the Goat Girl members found themselves struggling, too. The record addresses some of their issues directly, most notably on the songs ‘words fell out’, ‘take it away’, and ‘tcnc’, which all reflect upon drummer Rosy Jones’ experience of addiction and recovery. The band was left shaken, too, when, shortly before they were set to begin recording, guitarist Ellie Rose Davies decided to leave following health issues.
Alongside Lankum producer John “Spud” Murphy, the band’s three remaining members, Rosy, Lottie Pendlebury, and Holly Mullineaux worked beneath the shadow of Dublin’s centuries-old Hellfire Club, where uncanny happenings have long been rumoured to occur, to create a record that, though melancholic, bears hope for the future. We discussed that hope, how they dealt with Ellie’s departure, and how co-producer Spud came on board.
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The record sounds great. Are you excited about putting it out?
Lottie: Yeah, it’s kind of mad actually. I haven’t really thought about it. Well, I have. But I haven’t.
Holly: We’re very excited for many, many reasons. Can’t wait for everyone to hear it.
Lottie: Hopefully it’s going to be our big break.
Holly: Yeah, we’re waiting for our big break.
Are you?
All in unison: Yeah!
Lottie: Yeah. We’re the most underrated band.
Holly: In the world.
Lottie: Print that.
Will do. Can you talk about the album’s title, ‘Below The Waste’?
Holly: It started off as a bit of a joke. It was a pun. I just got out of the shower, and Roost (Rosy) came in the room. I was just like, oh, just so you know, I’m naked from below the waist. And then we were like, oooh.
Lottie: During that period, any phrases that are said are instantly like… album. Jumping on every bit of conversation to figure out what it’s gonna be called.
Holly: It’s nice to be able to pull out actual meaning from these things. Waste became a bit of a metaphor for things that are unnecessary, but also it has links with the climate and capitalism. It felt quite open and applicable to a lot of the themes on the record. And a bit funny.
You’ve stated that within the record is a desire to imagine a future that discards oppressive structures. Could you elaborate on that?
Lottie: It’s about that idea of seeking liberation through the hope and joy that you envision for a future world. Part of knowing what to do within the present is imagining the future and how you can get to that point, which is a framing that I learned about in lockdown. I was listening to The YIKES Podcast with Mikaela Loach [and Josephine Becker], who’s an eco-feminist. They were talking about this idea. And it does stem from a lot of literature that I was reading at the time, as well. Octavia E. Butler’s book, Parable of the Sower, constantly talks about change being this all-consuming force. Change as a concept is like her idea of God. There’s this group of people and the protagonist who are seeking a better world within this dystopian present, by living in a way that reflects what they want to see in the future.
I found the record to be quite melancholic. Do you agree?
Lottie: It’s all kinds of emotions for me. It’s melancholic, it’s nostalgic, it’s joyous, and angry. It’s quite human. We’re not just one thing, so our music shouldn’t just be one thing if it’s really representing how we feel. We feel all these things all the time. We wanted to show that somehow.
Holly: Sometimes the actual music can feel quite uplifting, but the lyrics are maybe a bit more sombre. There’s definitely moments of release, as well. I feel like it’s quite cathartic. It’s not afraid to be sad when it’s sad, and be loud when it’s loud.
Lottie: Quite a few of the songs, when they were written, were in the pandemic, and I was quite interested in this almost destructive sound. I became kind of obsessed with post-hardcore-y bands, or abrasive sounds. I think that definitely played quite a big role in it. I don’t know if that’s melancholic, though. It felt like it was depicting that time, which was quite hard for everyone.
Holly: We’ve all been through a lot together, emotionally, as friends, as a band. Particularly from the time that we finished ‘On All Fours’ ’til now. It’s been really, really, really challenging. Ellie was really sick, and we’ve all gone through difficult personal struggles, which I couldn’t have got through without these guys. We’re exploring some of that personal stuff on this record.
The tune that sticks out to me most in that vein is ‘tcnc’, which stands for “Take care, not crack,” right?
Rosy: Yeah, my mum said that to me.
Lottie: How did you feel when she said that?
Rosy: I felt… oh, is this therapy? I felt like, I don’t know. I just know that that’s how she is. That’s her personality. So it’s quite nice.
Lottie: It’s her love language.
Rosy: I went around for this massive family thing, for my auntie’s 60th birthday. So all my cousins are there, all their partners. I sent my family the album, thinking, oh, they’ll listen to it in their own time. And then my dad starts blasting it in the kitchen while he’s cooking. And I was like, oh, god. Then the song came on, I was like, heeeeeeeey. Then he’s like, wait, is that you? I can’t really hear what you’re saying. I was like, thank god. Thank god.
Let’s talk about recording in Ireland.
Lottie: We knew about Hellfire Studios. It just sounded like an amazing place to work, because Spud normally works out of his own studio in central Dublin. So he hired this space for us to record in. It had amazing equipment and a really beautiful landscape, because it was in the mountains. It was near Hellfire Club, which was exciting.
Holly: We wanted to get out of London. I guess there could have been a world that existed where Spud could have come over and we could have hired a studio in London, but we knew that we wanted to get away and be in nature, because we wanted to do some recording outside. We’d thought about doing it in churches in London, and there would be road noise and this and that. But there was a double whammy of, we’ll go to a place that Spud prefers and feels comfortable to work in, but also we get to have a different experience from what we’ve done before and get our heads down and not be distracted by being in London, with all the craziness that’s going on all the time.
Lottie: Hellfire Studios is a nice balance between being really natural, while also being made into a studio. You can still hear the way the sound moves around in the space. The actual structures are made of granite and old stone. I think that does really make a difference to the acoustics. But then you’ve got your treated acoustic doors that obviously help. There was a balance between the sound not being so untreated that it would just turn into mush, but also it had that kind of environmental quality to it.
How did you end up working with Spud? Had you heard Lankum’s last album, ‘False Lankum’, before you started recording?
Lottie: I heard ‘False Lankum’ in the car on the way to a festival with my friend. She was driving and she was like, oh, I really like it, but it’s a bit too doomy. No. It’s never too doomy. This is amazing.
Holly: We spoke to a lot of producers and had different ideas. We knew we wanted to co-produce. We wanted someone that could bring these atmospheres we weren’t quite sure how to create on our own. We wanted to find our sound, but to capture the space and thickness of what Spud had been doing. Luckily we met up with him and he was really up for doing this together as a co-production.
Lottie: It came at quite a good time. It was after we’d met everyone else and we were still not quite sure what to do. And then we had this light bulb moment of, oh, this guy. I feel like you do have to come to these things on your own, because we were told about him ages ago. I’m glad that we came to it on our own.
Rosy: If we’d met him before, it might have been different. But with things like Ellie leaving — it was a very strange time. But then we met him and it was like, yeah, this is going to work. We were all sold.
Lottie: We were playing together for quite a while, before Ellie decided she didn’t wanna do it anymore. It was a bit confusing to figure out what that departure would look like. It was right before we were gonna go into recording. It was just a bit confusing to navigate. People don’t tell you how to navigate these situations. But luckily we did it in a nice and amicable and friendly way, and we’re still in touch and stuff. Vibes are good.
Did you consider bringing in a fourth member?
Rosy: We knew we could make this album as a trio, because we’d been working on it so much. All of us have so many ideas with different melodies or arrangements or structures. It never felt like we needed someone else. We had finally come into a confidence where we felt quite sure of ourselves. We were just like, yeah, we can do it. And we did it.
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‘Below The Waste’ will be released on June 7th.
Catch Goat Girl at the following out-store tour:
June
7 Kingston Banquet
8 London Rough Trade East
9 Nottingham Rough Trade Nottingham + Bear Tree Records
10 Leeds Crash Records
11 Bristol Rough Trade / The Fleece
12 Brighton Resident Records / Chalk
Words: Tiernan Cannon
Photography: Holly Whitaker
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https://www.someothertime.co.uk/articles/goat-girl-interview-activism-music-and-the-road-ahead
Goat Girl - Music, Activism and the Road Ahead.
Back in 2018 Britain was at a standstill, trapped at a parliamentary impasse, paralysed by the unfolding realities of our democratic decision to leave the European Union. With the release of their self-titled debut album, Goat Girl captured the mood of a generation caught on the wrong side of the vote. The project, dripping with self-assured punk energy and acerbic zeal, immediately cemented them as one of alternative music’s most vital political voices.
Six years on and not much has changed. Today, we find Britain still ravaged and divided. Now, as a result of the endless perpetuation of “culture wars”, the cost of living crisis and spiralling inequality, all spearheaded by the continued incompetence of an increasingly right-wing government. All the while, Goat Girl have remained a constant presence at the forefront of political discourse and now, once again, at the apex of British music.
Despite their extended musical hiatus, the band have continued to use their platform to highlight an array of social injustice. “We try really hard to be as authentic to our ethics and morals as possible, in what we decide to be a part of and what we decide to call out”, Lottie Pendlebury, the band’s lead singer, explains to me as we chat over zoom along with bandmate Rosy Jones.
Their collective willingness to draw attention to important societal issues alongside their musical output has become an integral part of the band’s collective and individual identities and a defiant act of bravery in the mire of a famously unforgiving industry. They are quick to point out however, that they are just one voice in a much bigger movement for social change, “I think it’s testament to the people that we are around and take inspiration from, bands like piglet and Leatherhead and our friends who do How To Catch A Pig”, an Instagram account that was initially “created to push back against the silencing of radical left wing art” and who regularly help fans avoid unintended complicity in systems of oppression that are convoluted and not always immediately apparent.
Goat Girl’s music has always been intrinsically linked to their activism and this is something that Lottie acknowledges stems, in no small part, from the creative freedom afforded by their label, “we’re supported by an independent label that really nurtures the creative decisions that artists make”. Unshackled, the band have always been able to do things their way both in and out of the studio and their new releases once again reflect that as they undergo yet another musical evolution. “We just make what we want to make” Rosy reaffirms, considering the band’s propensity for change.
Making the decision to carve out their own lane is a choice that has proved creatively fruitful for the trio. Setting an early benchmark in the recent post-punk revival, they rejected the allure of polished production and a more commercial sound in order to create something real, something grittier that truly resonated with them. Real, Lottie explained “necessitated us playing together in a room, not being separated in different compartments of a studio where you can’t see each other. We want to be in a room together, we want to create a sound that is absorbing and feels like we’re basically playing a gig”.
When the band returned earlier this year with ‘ride around’, a grungy guitar track that slowly melts away into a moment of euphoric, barn dancing ecstasy, it was clear that they continue to uphold those same foundational principles.
Now, they have shared ‘motorway’, the second instalment from their upcoming, third album Below The Waste, set for release via Rough Trade Records later this year.
On ‘motorway’’ the band lean heavily on the sonic palette that coloured their previous studio recording, On All Fours. A synth-laden, melodic pop song perfectly crafted for cruising through the night on one of Britain’s fabled M Roads (we’d choose the M5 with an obligatory stop at Gloucester services, of course). Discussing the track Lottie outlined how the vocal riff and theme of the song “conjured up feelings of being a kid in the backseat of a car, not knowing where you are heading but feeling content, or the fleeting moments you spend in new cities, and how the journey rather than destination sometimes feels like the main component”.
The track is also accompanied by a brand new music video directed by world famous choreographer and director, Holly Blakey who has previously worked with the likes of Florence & The Machine, Harry Styles and Rosalia to name just a few. Styling by Matthew Josephs, adds an additional layer of drama to the fantasy visuals with the dancers all dressed in archival Vivienne Westwood pieces.
Work on ‘motorway’ began during a residential recording session in Cornwall, “I think everyone had gone out for a cup of tea and I [Lottie] just started playing a synth based line and started singing over it. I recorded myself doing that on video and you can see me looking around because I didn’t want anyone to walk in. Even though we can all be very vulnerable with each other, I think there’s something about when you first have an idea, I find that I like to be alone with that for a bit and figure out what it is”.
Having laid down the initial concept, it took some time for the track to finally reveal itself to the band. “It went through lots of different iterations to get to where it is now, like a lot of songs on the album. Some of them happened quite easily but some of them went through mad journeys and this was one of them” Rosy reflects before concluding, “I remember hearing that vocal melody that Lottie had made and I just thought it was so cool and we thought, this is going to be our pop anthem”.
Riffing on these bolts of inspiration reflects how the band set about writing the rest of the record too, with each member independently bringing something new to the table. Lottie reminisces, “the way we did it for this album is we all individually made music. Throughout lockdown we’d been at it quite a lot so we decided to make a Soundcloud where we had access to everyone’s ideas, things that hadn’t been quite fleshed out or even something as small as someone humming and we just picked which ones we wanted to do”.
What became of these scraps still remains to be seen, however, those who recently managed to secure a ticket for the band’s six-date ‘Test Drive Tour’, that took them across the length and breadth of the country, would have got a sneak preview of what’s to come.
In a constantly evolving musical landscape, Goat Girl remain a reliable source of authenticity and activism. With their latest releases and the impending arrival of their third studio album Below The Waste, the band continue to defy convention and challenge the status quo. Through their unwavering commitment to their values and willingness to tackle social injustice, they continue to shape the discourse around alternative music while inspiring a new generation to stand up and speak out.
‘motorway’ is out now and Below The Waste is set for release via Rough Trade Records on 7th June 2024.
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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