Music Reviews

Goat Girl On All Fours

(Rough Trade Records) Rating - 7/10

On their debut LP, Goat Girl covered an impressive amount of musical ground—whether it was moody post-punk, agitated rockers, or ominous instrumental interludes. Led by guitarist/vocalist Lottie Pendlebury's raspy drawl, the South London quartet's On All Fours is by turns more sinister but with a more danceable melodic sensibility outside the edges. On Badibaba and Closing In, the band wanders less and gets locked into a groove alongside slightly askew avant-garde touches. Anxiety, mental health, and the evils of society weave through many of these tracks, though the less we know about them, the better. Something akin to the Raincoats, there's a punky, quasi-improvisational approach to their sound that embraces imagery at its most freeform. Though, as the fuller arrangements of The Crack and They Bite on You attest, Goat Girl achieves a new clarity to their dense lyrical content when their murky antics turn more accessible.