Goddess – ‘Goddess’ album review: Fay Milton delivers profound playfulness

Posted On May 30, 2025May 30, 2025

THE SKINNY: From the get-go, there’s a roving sense of poetry and expansiveness to Goddess. The record offers up a profound sound that ties into the story of how it all came about. As the drummer in Savages, Fay Milton found herself on a musical hiatus when the band took a break. Like a creative lockdown of sorts, this pause brought about a ruminative introspection, prompting a swift exploration of artistic depths.

The album keeps that sentiment firmly in its sights throughout. Goddess welcomes you into a balm of sonic expedition as ambient worlds are woven dramatically with punchy poetry. The result is a bold album that is dense with ideas, yet light enough to waltz around freely. Its scope is enormous, but it never loses sight of a good old hook. It feels playful and profound in equal, paradoxical measure.

That potent mix is typified by the fact that Milton might offer up personal tales, but each time she does so, she welcomes a new guest collaborator to the track. Over the course of the record, she is joined by the likes of Bess Atwell, Shingai, and Shadow Stevie, to name but three, and each of these contributions brings something fresh without ever detracting from the very singular spirit of the album.

It’s a force of female and non-binary energy, musing on meaning and identity in a way that gently beguiles you towards deeper thought, just as much as it slaps you around the chops with daring immediacy. This self-titled debut, almost six years in the making, is an experience as much as it is a piece of art. It feels like walking through a gallery as opposed to being forced to face one particular painting.

Blending industrial pop with near neo-classical moments, the whirlwind album offers up a dynamic sense of motion. The movement in question feels largely inward, welcoming you on the same journey that Milton went on to make it, and it sports the product of that introspective mining exercise firmly on its sleeve. The intoxicating surface of the record crests the shore like a tsunami—the visceral result of something deep and unknowable that happened some place far off.

For fans of: Spending half an hour staring at a swaying tree, while the tax return form you should be filling in goes cold.

A concluding comment from my non-binary mate: “I feel so seen in such a weird and personal way that I’m both proud, but also presently closing the curtains.”

Release: May 30th | Producer: Fay Milton | Label: Bella Union

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