Photo Credit: Kelly Bolter
In the past few years, Milwaukee’s GGOOLDD has thrived in making a spectacle out of each live performance of their spirited and fearless brand of synth-heavy pop and rock. However, those opportunities have been nonexistent due to the current health crisis and they’ve had to bump their record release show to February 13, 2021 (a year after it was released digitally).
Previously, there was a time the band couldn’t get enough of the road. After two straight years of touring, singer Margaret Butler and her bandmates realized last year that they were getting a bit too comfortable with their sound. The band’s “bubblegum sounding pop” needed some tweaks. Following a much-needed break from touring, the band put their full focus on writing an album last year.
“We were kind of a little bit scared to veer from that for a long time and I think that finally we’re realizing that our fans are with us on the journey that we are on,” says Butler. “So, it’s definitely allowed us to open up more and be more lyrically honest than I think we have been, that I had been before. And, as far as the music, it’s slightly grittier, which makes us happy. We're going to keep writing a bunch of pop songs, but it's nice just as an artist to be able to flex different kinds of musical muscles.”
Those results can be heard on Here We Are, the band’s debut full length album.
Moving Forward
“Whenever you create any kind of art hopefully, you're always moving forward and you're learning,” says Butler. “And you're learning what you like about what you do, and you learn what you don't like, and you just move forward….So many of these songs were written on a whim and free styled which has never been something I’ve been comfortable doing until now. I’m such an over thinker when it comes to lyrics and it was nice to get to place where I can trust myself enough to let it go at least sometimes.”
|
|
While many songs on the album, such as “Amen/Hey Men” and “Dressing Doll,” reference the anger felt towards the current social and political situation, others such as the title track hit closer to home. “I wrote that song about my mother,” says Butler. “It's just about how a person is viewed in someone else's eyes and the reality of how it actually is. It's a very simple but emotional song.”
The band demoed the songs in her father’s backyard in his back house in Baton Rouge, LA. “It's definitely easier to write a dance song when you're in 75, 80-degree weather and the sun's out,” says Butler. “It's a lot better energy than trying to write with a bottle of whiskey in the middle of a snowstorm in your basement.”
For example, that lively atmosphere can be heard on “Welcome to My House.” “It was actually written during a party so the lyrics sort of came out naturally,” says Butler. “The song is supposed to feel, sonically, like the party we intended in the song. Fun and crazy and anything goes but with a darker sexier vibe.”
Producer Malachi DeLorenzo, the son of Violent Femmes’ founding drummer Victor and a member of Langhorne Slim’s touring band, helped further capture their live spontaneity. Says Butler, “We’ve never really sounded on record the way we do live and working with Malachi made that happen for us.”
To read more local music articles, click here.
To read more articles by Joshua Miller, click here.
