I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: June 8, 2018] Goat Girl

Goat Girl are a massive buzz band in England.

Back in March, The Guardian had this to say:

Fearless, omnivorous Goat Girl (named in reference to Bill Hicks’s lusty alter ego, Goat Boy) found each other, and their sound, in Brixton indie venue the Windmill, signing to Rough Trade (over Domino and XL) two years ago before releasing anything. Taking their time and choosing the right home has served them well – their eponymous debut sounds self-assured: 19 songs crafted with care, in which dirty grunge riffs take strange left turns.

I was surprised that they were playing here so soon, evidently on a multi-date tour with Parquet Courts.  But they proved to be an excellent compaion band to parquet Courts since they have a punk, DIY aesthetic but don’t stick to one genre of music

I’ll let NME describe their album:

The four piece’s debut album is a grubby, clattering thing that takes its lead from 1980s LA punk trailblazers like X and The Gun Club, who took traditional country music and fed it moonshine until it fell down in a ditch, then scraped the mud off its jeans, handed it a microphone and a broken electric guitar and made it walk through broken glass to sing in a grotty toilet venue bar over a broken PA system. Goat Girl have mixed this scrappy sound with the gothic ennui of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the doomy experimentalism of Tom Waits. The result is a late-night swagger through the murky underbelly of the town that Clottie Cream, Rosy Bones, Naima Jelly and L.E.D. – not, we assume, their birth names – call home, coming in at 19 swirling songs in 40 punchy minutes. It even includes a song that describes their very sound, the Pixies-esque belter ‘Country Sleaze’, thus rendering the past paragraph of me picking apart their sonics almost entirely pointless. Ah well.

Goat Girl was a lot of fun.  They played for about 40 minutes, presumably their whole album, although I didn’t know it.

They didn’t exactly have a “look” although Clottie Cream looked nice in her White oxford and black pants.  I also thought that their lyrics would be more pointed or political, but those that I could hear weren’t especially.  “You’re the Man” I thought would be sarcastic but the lyrics are just “you’re the man, you’re the man for me.”  Although “Creep’ is more of a feminist statement concerning women harassed on public transport (“I really want to smash your head in”).

Sadly her vocals were kind of murky.  That may have been my location or the recording setup.  In fact, midway through the show they had some unintentional squeals of feedback.  So bad, that at one point Clottie had to plug her ears with her fingers–while she was still singing.

Clottie sang most of the songs, like “Burn the Stake.”

LED on guitar (left) sang a couple of songs.  Even though she was right there, quite close to me, I never got a clear picture of her.  (Union Trasnfer lighting is really anathema to good pictures).

Naima Jelly (right) on bass had a great bass sound.

And drummer Rosey Bones was a lot of fun to watch.

But what was most interesting was the variety of styles they played.  Sometimes playing very loudly, but other times having a kind of drunken country feel.

The crowd responded and it looked like they enjoyed themselves as well.

They also came out during the Parquet Courts set and sang along (and crowd surfed) to “I’m Wide Awake.”

And then at the end of the Courts’ set, Rosey came out on stage and started through the Courts’ crap out into the audience–picks, water bottles etc.  She was encouraged to stage dive, but she refused.  They also turned off her mic so I have no idea what she was saying while she was up there for so long.