Goat Girl Brings Rock Charisma in New Album ‘Below The Waste’
Goat Girl, a trio made up of Lottie Pendlebury, Rosy Bones, and Hollie Mullineaux, is a stand-out act in a drab world of rock.
For those old enough to remember the 90s, grunge and alternative acts like Soundgarden, The Breeders, and Velocity Girl keenly split the difference between guitar pyrotechnics and ironic detachment in their sound. However, in this particular era, there was a focus on reminding audiences what made rock singers special: the unique charisma and talent to mesmerize required to be memorable in the genre regardless of whether or not they could sing a lick. Here, perhaps above all else, is where Goat Girl shines some 20-something years after the height of alt-rock stardom.
On Below The Waste, the third album from the group, the band makes two interesting decisions that highlight this focus on rock charisma. Interestingly, the band decided to produce the album with no open sonic space, deadening the sound broadly, but bringing a unique focus to the dynamics of the group’s sound, which is as intricate as it is coolly disinterested in trying to reinvent itself. In this way, the album recalls Soundgarden’s Superunknown, which was an equally bold work focused on darkness and light while removing atmospheric noise.
On “Ride Around,” the first proper track on the album, the verse guitar riffs are immediately familiar to anyone who has ever gone to a VFW or bar show for a local act, plodding and heavy in their tones.
The drums also sound as if they’re playing a parody of rock music, until the chorus break, where a rim tap shatters the inelegant sound. A quick flourish of something like a gong gives way to a swirling, psychedelic guitar passage that transforms the song into something much more interesting and surprising than what was originally promised.
After a second verse with an interesting, high-toned plinking guitar part in the background, the song transforms into something fully Goat Girl-esque at the two-minute mark. A buzzy, almost jazz-like guitar part creates a feeling of urgency and immediacy. By the three-minute mark, the song has transformed into a Latvian folk song in the happy whimsy of the string sound, before washing ashore on the rocks of something between hopeful folk and the original dark, riff-heavy rock.
The other move the production makes, by extension, is putting real focus on the vocals, which have a dreamy, intense quality, as if a glacier has trapped a butterfly colony in the ice of its largess. In each song, from the post-punk vocal of “Ride Around,” to the bright yearning of “Sleep Talk,” Lottie Pendlebury manages to do very much with very little, giving the song a central focus while never really showing off a sense of theatricality.
Goat Girl is often described as a post-punk outfit, which is adorably incorrect in terms of its ambition, but the influence of the genre on Pendlebury’s vocals cannot be overstated. Sometimes singing, sometimes whispering, and often something in between, Pendlebury captivates by suggesting more is going on in her vocal stylings. As if beyond the edge of each note, there’s an entire lush passage deepening the emotion.
On “Motorway,” for example, the clipped tuneful melody doesn’t ring out, but the pronunciation of the words—which feel like line readings in a play—gives a generous definition to the song that can’t be captured in mere musicality. Together, especially on this record, the business of the compositions and the emotive placidness of Pendlebury’s voice create something exciting. Not unlike the arrival of Pavement or Japanese Breakfast, or, perhaps more aptly, Thao and The Get Down Stay Down if that band wasn’t as loose as they had practiced being.
“Play It Down” features sultry, speak-singing vocals offset by both a playful, in-the-pocket bass line, and upbeat retro electronic trills that introduce a new shade to the group’s sound. Even as the song morphs (as per usual in a Goat Girl track) into something even more interesting, the cigarette cool of Pendlebury’s tone anchors the ambition of the music so that nothing threatens to get away from the band.
Occasionally, as with all albums, there are misfires. Namely, the dubious use of echoed vocals, or call-and-response on some tracks, which are a roll of the dice in terms of what they contribute. Still, it’s a small grievance for what is genuinely a solid effort from an interesting group.
It’s tempting to say the biggest hurdle for listeners is the mileage one gets out of songs that are always shifting outward, but the truth is a bit more perilous: This might be the band’s last chance to clear the board without diminishing returns.
Unless one is Joanna Newsom or Annie Clark, someone who can take their time between records, it is hard to not miss when trying to keep a career in music afloat, and this is especially true of bands. This is the peak of Goat Girl’s sound, and the next record either needs to try something radically different, or take the L and figure it out on the road. For now, we’re given a treat with this range-y and bold album, but sweetness can be a difficult taste to savor.
I implore fans to enjoy each song as much as possible: Listen ad nauseum on the apps; dissect tracks on Reddit or fan boards; have a lively chat in comment threads on Stereogum and YouTube video releases, and pay as many times as you can to see them on tour. This is Goat Girl’s golden era with their current approach to craft. However, with enough support (and money earned after taxes), perhaps the band can take some time to figure out how to surprise once again on their fourth release.
Of course, the flipside of releasing something as cool as Below The Waste is that it reminds one how lacking the scene is for interesting music. For anyone in a band out there reading this, La Croix coastered near them, an amp and guitar humming quietly near the practice leather couch, consider the album to be an invite to try harder, do better, and make weird shit that will help Goat Girl to be part of a true rock scene, not an anomaly in a wave of releases that sound more like Charlie Puth if he had Phoebe Bridgers in his band, and less like Illuminati Hotties reminding us that rock can still feel hot and dangerous.
Photo courtesy of Goat Girl
