With a member diagnosed with cancer and their politics deepened by BLM, the south London indie quartet have reassessed their priorities ahead of their excellent second album
South London quartet Goat Girl were deep into making their second album when it became clear that something was very wrong with their youngest member, guitarist-vocalist Ellie Rose Davies. At the end of 2019, she had had lumps on her neck for some time, which eventually spread to both armpits. It wasn’t until the 23-year-old’s “fourth or fifth” trip to the doctors that she was finally referred for a blood test, then a biopsy. “By which time the cancer was at stage four,” she says.
Davies had Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, and had to start a six-month course of chemotherapy immediately. “We were pretty worried because we knew it was getting worse,” says their bassist, Holly Mullineaux. They had been mixing the record with their producer, Dan Carey, when Davies got her results, “and we all just started crying”.
