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The south London quartet’s second album has is double-edged woozily beguiling in music and caustic in lyrics, a mixture of shoegaze, postpunk, and electronica with a distinctive sound produced by the groundbreaking Dan Carey, who has a real ear for newer acts with something different to offer, such as Kae Tempest, Black Midi and Franz Ferdinand, Tiña, Warmduscher, Squid and Fontaines D.C. It would be all too easy to put Goat Girl in the same south-London bracket as contemporaries Shame, but singer Clottie Cream (Lottie Pendlebury), guitarist L.E.D. (Ellie Rose Davies), bassist Naima Jelly (Naima Redina-Bock) and drummer Rosy Bones (Rosy Jones) offer something different Clottie’s deep voice is mesmeric, L.E.D.’s guitars are reaching a newer range of subtlety and sounds, and with the backline, keyboards and some horn additions, there’s far more on offer than their 2018 self-titled debut. The climate-change themed The Crack was recently highlighted in our New Songs section, and other key issues about gender, politics and prejudice and social injustice run throughout. Other standout tracks include P.T.S. Tea, The Crack, Badibaba, Once Again and perhaps most of all, Sad Cowboy, which has some echoes of Midlake. If there are any further musical comparisons, they compare with bands as diverse as Broadcast to The Smiths, Stereolab to Sharon Von Etten’s song The Serpent, but with that mixture and range, Goat Girl have certainly now found their own field. Out on Rough Trade.
Feel free to also check out our favourite albums of 2020 here:
Fiona Apple to Lianne La Havas to Yves Tumor: favourite albums of 2020 – Part 1
Agnes Obel to Bob Dylan, Phoebe Bridgers to Sault: favourite albums of 2020 – Part 2
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