The members of Goat Girl weren’t far into their teenage years when they first started jamming together at the Brixton Windmill in London. The four-piece originated after playing at the same open mic nights and gigs time and time again. Six years later with a switch of bassists and now in their 20s, their sound has matured alongside them.
Switching up instruments, experimenting with their sound and songwriting process, their sophomore album titled _On All Fours_ provides a different experience than their debut album _Goat Girl_ from 2018.
Read our conversation about the album set to drop on January 29th, the unorthodox ways that it came to be, and more below!
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**I want to ask you guys about the name of the record, _On All Fours._ How did you end up on that name?**
**Lottie:** We were at Dan Carey’s, who produced the album, having dinner, celebrating. I think we'd finished recording or were near to it, and his wife Jane found this book called "Giles Goat-Boy" and said that it was really good. I think we were drunk and sort of flicking through it, reading passages from it and one of the passages was _On All Fours_. So it's quite a basic story \[laughs\]. I think we all kind of clicked with that name and we said it out loud. We had gone through quite a few names already. Sort of jokey names. And it's always the hardest thing to do, finding a title for something or like a name for a band. So it was quite good that we were all kind of, apart from Ellie, quite receptive to the name.
**Rosy:** Yeah, there's quite a few different phrases from that book that we were like, "I bade farewell to my hornless goat herd" I think that was one. And then one was like, kid shit. But then it said _On All Fours_ and we were just like chanting it. Ellie was on the phone with her dad or something and we were just like, "Oh! oh!"
**Where do you guys get inspired to create this album?**
**Lottie:** I think loads of different things. It was quite a long process in writing the album so that there's a lot of time for us to be inspired by different stuff. Just music-wise, listening to more kind of alternative, people like Broadcast, Stereolab, Blonde Redhead was my kind of inspiration for this record I think.
**Rosy:** When Naima, our old bassist, left kind of towards the end of when we were touring the first album, and then we got Holly in to play bass and we did finish off the tour. And then we liked her, so we started to practice together and trying to write stuff and it was quite fresh. I don't know, it was exciting. I feel like once we'd all sort of clicked together and things were starting to make sense, I think then we were thinking like, yeah, we can make an album. Let's do it.
**Holly:** I was really grateful for the opportunity to kind of start from scratch, I guess. That was quite nice. Because it felt like we could all have creative input, including me. So that was quite a nice place to start and get to know each other, like free music as well, and kind of discover what each is into. And we swapped around instruments quite a lot. And just got to know each other and I think through the lyrics, kind of come from a lot of conversations that we've had, between us, so I think it kind of came. Yeah, that was a big part of the making of it, or like the inspiration behind it, I guess. It's like experimenting, getting to know each other and pushing ourselves up, maybe outside of our comfort zones a little bit, trying out different things and just being quite free with it! No rules!
**Is that something that you think you guys are gonna continue on in the future when you make new music, switching things up and trying not to stay stagnant with one thing?**
**Rosy:** I reckon so. Yeah. It's a lot funner.
**Ellie:** I feel like we've done it once and we'll probably keep working in that way to some degree, because it keeps it fresh.
**Holly:** Maybe I'll have to leave and then you'll have to get a new---
**Rosy:** Maybe I'll leave!
**Lottie:** Instead of them leaving we just include more. So we'll become like an orchestra or something.
**Holly, what was it like being the new person in the band? Was it intimidating at all?**
**Holly:** I don't know, it wasn't intimidating, because I really wanted to do it. It was kind of weird. It felt like one of those things that was just meant to work out because I've kind of just quit a job that I really hated and I had sort of no plans, at the exact time that this kind of happened. I actually found out through Luis, the manager. I'd seen Goat Girl play a few times. We had similar friends, been to loads of gigs together. I was already like friends of Dan Carey so it didn't feel that weird.
**Rosy:** Written in the stars!
**Holly:** Yeah, it wasn't that weird and the timing was really good. I'm just grateful that it worked out when we got on and I played good enough to get in the band, I guess. But it wasn't that intimidating. These guys made me feel really at home from the offset basically just, tried out some songs and like sitting in the garden and having a chat and it didn't feel like... I mean, obviously, it's a bit weird, because it's just a bit of an awkward situation for everyone when you're just like trying out auditioning someone. I think as far as auditions go it probably couldn't really have gone better.
**Ellie:** It helps because we asked you to learn two songs but you learned like four or five. And we were kind of like, she's probably a keeper.
**It sounds like a lot has changed in the past couple of years for you guys, and since your last record, I wanted to ask you how you think your sound has changed since your first record.**
**Rosy:** I guess it's kind of clearly got more electronic. And that was something that was kind of happening before we were even writing _On All Fours_. We were already kind of...not sick of just guitar music, but we've always sort of listened to lots of different types of music and I think we wanted to explore more electronic sides. I think different instruments bring different things out of people. That was what was really nice with this was the way that we weren't stuck to our native instruments meant that sometimes I was playing guitar or synth, and Lottie was playing bass and I think things would be written that wouldn't have been written if we just stuck to our usual instruments. I think you can kind of hear that you can hear the personalities coming through.
**You guys have been talking about how you were writing and how you wrote it over the course of a long time, over the course of a year. Do you guys have a favorite memory of putting it together?**
**Rosy:** There's quite a lot.
**Holly:** I really liked spending a week on this farm, wedding venue thing out of season. We had these big double bunk beds and we just set up our stuff for a week. We were going on walks during the day and cooking together and stuff and drinking and just having a good time. And that was really fun. I think we got a lot of ideas down and just could feel like not... London can be a bit distracting, and claustrophobic sometimes and I think we kind of needed that time together to get the ball rolling with the writing and that was a fun thing to do.
**Rosy:** It was really nice to basically just, that's all we had to do, just wake up and that's what we do. The only other things you had to do is eat. Yeah, it's just a very nice position to be in to be able to do that.
**Lottie:** Yeah, I think my favorite memory is probably when we were at the other recording, well, just another studio of our producers. I think it was like, we'd sort of agreed to almost lock ourselves into this space, and continuously write and put all this pressure on ourselves. Because I think the time in which we were going to be recording the album was getting closer.
**Holly:** So it was like definitely going to happen.
**Lottie:** And so we were kind of, I guess freaking out a bit but also not because we definitely had enough kind of material to work with. But it was the first night that we locked ourselves in. And we got really drunk and the place that we were was just so fucking hot and it was in the height of summer. We were like naked and kind of erratic and a bit drunk or whatever and just playing together for the first time \[laughs\]. We came up with a song called “Jazz”, which is the third song on the album, and it was a song that miraculously came together and that we all really agreed on which didn't happen a lot. I think there was a lot of back and forth with the other songs but with this, it was just like, yes. That is probably to do with the mood we were all in as well.
**Rosy:** Yeah, I like that one.
**Would you guys say that's like a typical environment for you guys to write, do you guys like to kind of put yourself in and weird environments in order to get stuff done like that?**
**Holly:** Maybe we need to do it a bit more. Like, if something's not working, we need to get naked or… \[laughs\]
**Rosy:** We had to have a safe word like in case it got too weird or annoying. I feel like whenever I'd go to someone's pedals, and I’d just make a really annoying noise and everyone would just be like, pineapple, pineapple!
**This album is going to be coming out at the beginning of next year. Live music is not something that's really prospering right now with COVID and all, but if you guys could perform this album live, do you think you'd have a favorite track off of it?**
**Rosy:** I really like “Bang.” I think that would just be like such an epic one to polo. I kind of want to have loads of extra people playing as well. And pyrotechnics and stage design.
**Lottie:** Yeah, I can't wait to play “Bang” because it's basically led by a synth and so I was playing the synth when we recorded it and wasn't playing guitar. So now there's room for something else to happen when we play it live. It's quite exciting. It's already quite a sick sounding song, so I feel like it's gonna get even sicker.
**Holly:** You’ll be able to feel that whammy guitar at the end---
**Lottie:** Yeah, it's gonna be quite epic. I'm very excited to play that song.
**Ellie:** With the bass and the drums because that baseline and the drum groove just makes you want to move. The beat it's like doo... doo... doo doo doo... doo \[laughs\].
**Rosy:** Then Ellie, your epic guitar line. That is that's gonna fucking pop off.
**Lottie:** Watch when it just flops \[laughs\].
**Holly:** I'm kind of wondering if I'll ever not enjoy the ending of “Sad Cowboy” as well. I really hope the novelty of it doesn't wear off after playing it like the 100th time or something. It hasn't worn off yet, it’s fun to play.
**Rosy:** Yes, and keep it going for like ages as well.
**Holly:** To make it longer and longer and longer.
**Talking about “Sad Cowboy”, I watched the music video for it and a couple of your other music videos. I was wondering how important it is to you guys to be involved with the process of creating images for your music videos and how you guys come up with your ideas for those things.**
**Lottie:** It's become more important to us, I think with this record. We spent quite a lot of time seeking out people that we thought would be suitable to the aesthetic of the album and came across Jocelyn who worked on that “Sad Cowboy” video, it was to kind of embrace the surrealness of the artwork and also of the lyrical content and the sound of the singles. And then we worked with my sister on the second video. So working with people who we also wanted to have really close relationships with and be a part of, because yeah, I think we have had experiences in the past of not doing that and not having those relationships. And one of the first videos we made, I remember just being told to dance and dance with a group of people to the song that was going to be the single and a strobe light was flashing at us. Just quite a weird experience I didn't really enjoy. And so it's like how to make it fun for us and fun for everyone involved as well, which is important.
**Rosy:** I think the really nice thing about it is I kind of see the album as sort of a living breathing thing that keeps evolving as its own sort of organism. And then the artwork was like painted to the songs. And then the videos were taken from the artwork. And it just sort of all keeps going ‘round and ‘round.
**Ellie:** I really like that as well. Even now, it's evolving because now we're working with Flo White. She did the set design for the photographs, which are taken by Holly Whitaker, and I think she and maybe Toby if they're up for collaborating, but we haven't spoken to them yet but in, in my head... integrated and did some stage design for us. So it's, yeah, it's constantly growing.
**Lottie:** I mean, everyone involved knows each other quite well, and we're all friends so it feels like this collective almost. It's really cool when there's a video being made that's bringing to life the artwork of Toby and Aiden and them actually seeing it happening in front of their eyes. That's only what they said, that was a really cool experience to be involved in. And I don't know if that necessarily happens a lot of the time. So, yes, trying to retain that.
**Is there any message that you want to give to your fans, or to the people reading this?**
**Holly:** Thank you for listening.
**Rosy:** You can do anything you put your mind to.
**Ellie:** The universe is working for you, not against you. I feel like something I need to remember sometimes.
**Lottie:** I can't think of anything that remarkable. But I guess just, thank you for taking the time to listen. And also, I hope this inspires something within the people that enjoy it. And maybe they can make bands or make art or voice their opinions about things and have a platform in some way. Which is what I think I really treasure about being in the band.
**Is there anything else that you guys want people to know about Goat Girl or about this album?**
**Holly:** It's out on the 29th.
**Lottie:** I think people know that. \*laughs\* What's something that hasn't been talked about at all?
**Rosy:** It was ghostwritten! It was recorded underwater. A lot of people don't know that.
**Ellie:** That’d be so cool if you could record inside a submarine.
**Rosy:** Yeah, that’d be sick… well we did, we did do that!
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