One of the most original bands to emerge over the last few years is London all female four piece ‘Goat Girl’. They have been releasing material since their ‘Scum’ / ‘Country Sleaze’ single in 2016, but their self titled debut album, which appeared earlier this year put them in a different league. By tradition an album is a simple parade of songs, which follow one after the other, usually with a few seconds silence between each one. ‘Goat Girl’ is more of a suite, however. There are songs in the conventional sense to be sure. Some are even quite commercial in form, notably single release, ‘The Man‘, and the gloriously eccentric ‘Viper Fish‘, which has since been blessed with an equally quirky animated video. There are ballads like the haunting ‘Throw me a Bone‘ or ‘Slowly Reclines‘. Others, however, although recognisably still songs, are less conventionally rock songs, for example ‘The Man with no heart or brain‘ – whilst others are as much statements as songs, notably ‘Creep‘ – an angry piece about being harassed as a woman on public transport. Meanwhile, all of these pieces are embedded in a mixture of short musical and spoken interludes to form a uniform whole, rather than a simple list of separate individual tracks.
Live in Manchester, the band played as a six piece, with the four band members being supplemented by a male keyboard player and a female violinist. The latter was not identified on the night, but she played the beautiful violin part from ‘Creep’ which on the album, is played by Tina Longford. She also added violin lines to other songs and had a wonderfully fluid style, reminiscent of Graham Smith of the superb, but much neglected, 1970s Prog Rock band ‘String Driven Thing‘.
‘Goat Girl’ are not great ones for banter with the audience, but they put on a wonderful set, which included many of the songs from the album, plus debut single ‘Scum‘, with at least one cover version thrown in for good measure. One of the most striking features of the band has been the fact that however strange their music can sometimes become, it sits on a foundation of superb musicianship and this was as apparent live as on record. The two guitarists: Ellie Rose Davies (who uses the stage name L.E.D.) and singer Lottie Pendlebury (Clottie Cream) are perhaps the most obviously strong in this respect, but ‘Goat Girl’ have an interesting tendency towards giving songs solo bass introductions and as your reviewer also plays bass I had made a point of arriving early enough to get a spot leaning on the right hand side of the stage, where bassist Naima Bock (a.k.a. Naima Jelly) usually takes up station, so that I could watch her fingers. To many, the words innovative and bassist do not readily go together (although I have no idea why – just watch ‘Kite Base‘ and say that), but she really is and she has a lovely warm sound. Witness, for example, the into to ‘Throw me a Bone‘ where she manages to make a Squier Precision bass sound like an acoustic double bass, rather in the style of the intro to ‘Pentangle’s ‘Light Flight’.
In her role as singer Pendlebury excelled. She has a most distinctive voice, often quite low in pitch for a woman, but with a considerable range. Sadly, as so often, the vocals were mixed too low for all three acts at the ‘Gorilla’, with ‘Goat Girl’ as the headliners faring little better than the support acts, but Pendlebury refused to fall into the usual trap of trying to compensate for the poor sound engineering by shouting. She sung as she would have done if she was being mixed properly. As a result, she preserved all of the subtlety of her vocal parts, they just came out rather quietly, but that was hardly her fault. In fact, we applaud the line she took and more singers should follow her lead. Their performances would be better. They would be less likely to damage their voices, and it might even force sound engineers to get their act together rather more. It’s hardly rocket science after all. Perhaps whoever did such a superb job on the mixing desk for Aurora’s gig at the ‘Academy’ on October 10th should give lessons.
Goat Girl had two support acts, one of whom was part of the tour: ‘Sneaks‘, from Washington DC, which is the project of solo artist Eva Moolchan. We had not come across her before, and she perhaps suffered more than most from the poor engineering of vocals on the night. But she was a real revelation that had us wanting more. Her music consists largely of funk influenced ballads with hypnotic rhythms, and sung in a beautifully gentle voice, somewhat reminiscent of early Suzanne Vega. She sings alone on stage, although she employs a chorus effect to multiply her voice. For about half of her songs she plays bass, interestingly with quite an aggressive twangy style that contrasts markedly with her voice. But otherwise, her only accompaniments are backing tracks and drum machine patterns played off a laptop computer. The results really are stunning. She had her current record, ‘It’s a Myth‘, on sale on the merch stall and we have been very glad we bought it. Whether, you would call it an album or an EP is something of a moot point, because it is somewhere in between. At a little over 18 minutes it has the length of a generous EP, but it has 10 tracks. She simply does not go in for long pieces. We can heartily recommend it, and she has a new album ‘Highway Hypnosis‘ out in January 2019, which will be available on CD, Vinyl or as a download.
The opening act was ‘Black Country New Road’ (a.k.a. BCNR), who were both wonderful and maddening. Their music was absolutely wonderful. It is heavily sax driven and has something of the Jazz Rock feel of Daevid Allen period ‘Gong’, but heavier, and with added violin. Their music is largely instrumental, occasionally with something of an element of Near Eastern crossover – and what lyrics there are were often spoken rather than sung. On the night, they were a six piece, with male guitarist, drummer and sax, and female bassist, violin and keyboards. The frustrating bit is that this is currently about all we can tell you about them. They don’t talk to the audience. They did not appear on the merch stall afterwards. They do have a Facebook page, but it says virtually nothing, least of all who the band members are, and to add yet more confusion, there seems to be another band with the same name. So, all we can really say is that they are wonderful, and I mean seriously wonderful, but who they are or whether they have any records out, I have no idea. The latter, in particular, is a shame, because if we knew of any records, we would already have bought them.
This was a great evening with three great acts. It is a shame that ‘Goat Girl’ did not come out to talk on their merch stall, as ‘Dream Wife’ did three days later at the same venue, and it is a shame that ‘BCNR’ are such a secret, but it was still very much a night to remember. We already have ‘Sneaks’ new album on pre-order and we will look forward to seeing what ‘Goat Girl’ do next, because whatever it is, it is bound to be memorable.
Hera Says.
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Hera says I should be the star now 