Onstage at the Roundhouse, Goat Girl started their set as they intended to go on. From the rear of the circular stage, prior to the evening’s first song, word reached singer and guitarist L.E.D. of a hold-up by their one-person string section. “We’ve got a problem with a bow,” she said. The time it took the violinist to rectify the matter was about long enough to ponder at what point the audience of a thousand people might shift from collective silence to something approaching restlessness. My guess was six or seven hours. It was that kind of show.
Despite forthcoming support slots with Liam Gallagher and Sam Fender, Goat Girl are not necessarily an easy sell for a mainstream crowd. Formed in South London, like many an indie group before them, this all-female quartet exist to challenge the notion that happiness, or success, is index-linked to commercial popularity.
Released last year, the south-east Londoners’ second album, the top-30-charting On All Fours, deals impressively with modern themes of anxiety, mental health and sexual identity. As a piece of work it is many things, most of them good, but what it is not is a recipe for a concert at which people are at liberty to rock’n’roll all night and party every day.
Appearing at the Roundhouse as part of the seven-night In The Round festival, such was the collective diffidence that at times it was hard to distinguish fans of the band from audience members who had come simply to lend their support to this most lovely of venues. Throughout Goat Girl’s svelte 65-minute set, the feeling was one of reserve and remove; sure, the applause came easy, but cheers were at a premium. When the band broke yet another gravid silence, this time apologising for “f***ing up” the opening of Anxiety Feels, the effect was like someone breaking wind in front of the Pope.
Still, it’s early days in 2022. Outside, Camden Town was almost as deserted as it was in the depths of lockdown. Entry to the Roundhouse (at the north end of the Chalk Farm Road) was contingent on evidence of a negative lateral flow test. Somewhat too cool for school, Goat Girl may be, but at least we were spared the well-meaning doggerel of performers keen to tell their audience how much they’ve been missed, or how live music is a life-giving force without which western society is doomed. In fact, the pandemic wasn’t mentioned at all on Tuesday night. The words “thank you for coming, it’s been too long” at the end of the show is the closest we got.
All of which meant that the concert relied on largely fantastic music for its impact. Melodious if occasionally austere, when playing songs such as Where Do We Go? and Once Again, not to mention a perfectly brilliant rendition of early-day favourite Viperfish, there was little doubt that Goat Girl sound like a band who belong on this most famous of stages. The arrangements were thoughtful and often delicate; the vocals flickered with unease. Never less than absorbing, at times the effect was transformative.
In fact, it would be even more so if only the musicians were willing to lift up their heads and project themselves to the people who had taken the trouble to join them. While there is much to recommend a group who are unwilling to engage with the more hackneyed tropes of a conventional rock show, the refusal to properly connect with an audience who have gathered under inconvenient circumstances is something else entirely.
Touring from June. Details: goatgirl.co.uk
