Goat Girl and Jocelyn Anquetil On Each Other’s Work

Poppy Richler asks Goat Girl and Jocelyn Anquetil, two different creatives who have worked together (a band and a visual artist), how their crafts cross and what inspires them artistically about each other.

The music video for ‘Sad Cowboy’ by Goat Girl transports you to another dimension over five minutes. It’s a hazy blend of Western warriors, deserted fields and open-air dancing. Having made videos for Bree Runway, King Krule and Ashnikko, it’s clear artist and director Jocelyn Anquetil has a talent for creating the visual equivalent to music, no matter what genre.

Paired with the gritty lyrics of post-punk icons Goat Girl (Lottie, Holly, Ellie, and Rosy), the band’s sound fuses neatly with Anquetil’s vision. Such a perfect connection led us to wonder how musicians and visual artists gain inspiration from other creative mediums, how this manifests in their work, and how it leads to innovative collaboration.

Poppy: What’s the earliest music video memory you have?

JOCELYN: When I was six I lived on a farm commune and MTV would always be playing in the house. I’ve such a vivid memory of Eve and Gwen Stefani’s ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’, where they’re both riding motorbikes. I’d stand in front of the TV pretending to ride a motorbike.

Poppy: Have motorbikes reappeared in your videos?

I did an Ashnikko video with a motorbike against a green screen. There was another static one in the Bree Runway video. Interestingly, back in 2001 when ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’ was released, there’d be one music video for a single but now, recording artists need to make videos for most album tracks because that’s how people engage.

Poppy: How did you get into directing music videos?

JOCELYN: By accident! At university I studied a mix of set design, performance art, filmmaking and costume making (it was very weird). I wanted to be a set designer so I ran stages at festivals, wanting to be the next Ez Devlin and creating shows like Watch The Throne or the Lady Gaga tour. I ended up working as a director’s assistant on commercials. I’d never considered film but I somehow got into VR [virtual reality], won a Dazed & Confused competition with a video I made, and made a film about nails with my nail artist friend.

The people around me were so helpful and I ended up meeting a producer called Adam Farley (who’s a G) and that’s how I ended up directing Ashnikko’s video. At the time we were making her music video, her popularity suddenly skyrocketed. Sometimes I look around like this makes no sense, this wasn’t the plan! But I’m alright with it. Sometimes I think to myself on set, I don’t know what I’m doing! But fuck it.

Poppy: Do you combine VR and music videos?

JOCELYN: I’ve never actually considered merging VR and music videos – its more about picking elements of one (like using CG [computer-generated] instead of VR for the Ashnikko video) and applying them to the other because I don’t want it to feel forced. If I were to do an artist’s bio I’d say: I’m interested in alternate realities that tell stories through dystopias from worlds that are similar but different. With VR I was exploring concepts that made sense with VR.

For one festival, I created a secret underground world where there’s only women who’ve never felt the inhibitions of society. I’ve also explored the concept of social media – a girl gets so into making an alternate persona that she vanishes from reality, has gone into the internet and the VR allows you to follow her in there. Conceptually it’s always about Millennialism/Gen Z-ness, the internet and other worlds.

Goat Girl: (from left to right) Ellie, Holly, Lottie, and Rosy

Poppy: GOAT GIRL, what was it about Jocelyn’s work that made you want to collaborate?

Ellie: For me, it was the post-apocalyptic alien themes that run through her work. All the colours are so vibrant and she’s got this strange, almost futuristic style that I love. It mirrors our music because we’re constantly thinking about the future and if we can stop it from happening. With all the artists we’ve worked with, we’ve put our trust in people we know will do a good job.

Holly: I didn’t previously know of Jocelyn’s work, but as soon as I watched it I loved it. On our first zoom, she really got our idea.

Poppy: So JOCELYN, it seems this was a collaboration waiting to happen! What was your initial idea for Goat Girl’s proposal?

JOCELYN: The idea evolved into a woman travelling through a dream world on a horse, encountering animals and creatures along the way. From this, we built a concept behind why she was travelling.

Poppy: Did the end-product differ to what you’d originally imagined?

JOCELYN: Less horse! At the beginning, we all thought: she’s going to be galloping everywhere on a horse but that turned into – we can’t afford a horse, the health and safety risks of a horse, the person who can ride a horse, so no horse…Basically apart from the horse, it was the same. Though we first imagined the visuals as quite high end, we ended up going in a lo-fi textural direction, and it was this aesthetic that made the video.

Lockdown gave me an ‘I’ll-do-anything’ spirit. I’ll stand in a field in 35 degree heat with no shade and my tapes will melt (that actually happened)! All the glitching at the end is real – my tapes melted and I thought well this looks good we’ll use it! (I cried for a week). I kept thinking: this is the end of your career, maybe everything means nothing… and I week later I was like…you were really tired and really stressed. When I think about it, it’s really funny but at the time not so much.

Poppy: GOAT GIRL, if each of you were to play a role in the movie Sad Cowboy, what are your character names, what are their personality traits and what’s their Achilles Heel?

Rosy: I’d like to be like CowToy – half-toy, half-man – something that’s dead but re-animated…lots of silver and diamonds…

Holly: I remember we were all getting glammed up for the shoot…a bit too glam and Jocelyn was like no no no it needs to be more culty! So I guess I’d go back to that glam space cowboy.

Stills from ‘Sad Cowboy’:

Poppy: Do any of you practice another art form apart from music?

Ellie: We all paint!

Holly: Not in any serious way, but I started lino-printing in lockdown.

Rosy: I started embroidery, sewing…

Ellie: I started making videos in lockdown – when I was bored, I’d go out with my phone, record stuff and make music videos with the footage.

Poppy: What do you listen to when you’re doing this?

Rosy: Classical and pop music are good inspiration for me.

Holly: Something ambient – not too full on or distracting vocally. Hypothetically I’d stick on some Brian Eno.

Ellie: I can imagine putting on some Aphex Twin or jazzy stuff like Alfa Mist. Not techno…I don’t think I could let the creative juices flow…

Poppy: What’s the most memorable costume you’ve ever made or bought?

Rosy: I used to be obsessed with Doctor Who – I had a Doctor Who themed party and my mum spent ages making me a Dalek costume out of cardboard before I decided I wanted to be something else on the day.

Holly: I have a strong memory of the opposite situation. In year 6 I was in the school production of The Little Mermaid – most of the girls were these beautiful mermaids and seahorses, but I was cast as an eel. I had to wear the most boring, brown outfit and everyone else looked amazing and I looked shit.

Lottie: For a while I had a recurring character called Alien Girl which was a proud moment for me – I had a green wig, everything was silver and I had loads of eyes…it felt pretty good.

Ellie: I remember my mum made me a costume for World Book Day – I was the snake from Harry Potter and she made me this headband but I don’t remember what it was made out of…

(Ellie’s mum in the background: A swimming hat!)

Ellie: I had this amazing velvety, patterned, shimmering cape. I loved that cape. I still wear it and used to on nights out…

JOCELYN: At uni I went to a Disney themed party dressed as Pumbaa from the Lion King… safe to say I wasn’t the sexiest dressed there but someone still hit on me…I usually get a bit too conceptual and no one actually knows what I’m dressed up as… Once I went to a Halloween party as a dead hipster that drowned in the mainstream.

Poppy: Have you ever had dreams that have influenced your arts?

Rosy: I had this really scary dream where there were men in yellow hazmat trying to come find and kill me. I hid but they were still coming at me so I took a rock and smashed the head of one of them until it cracked. I woke up and wrote a song about it because it was so vivid.

Holly: Is that the egg song?

Rosy: Yeah! ‘Like An Egg’.

Holly: I always have those moments where I write a song in my sleep, wake up and think that was so good!, try and voice note it but then forget it.

JOCELYN: I wouldn’t say that I’ve used any dreams as influences for music videos…but then also how do you even know sometimes? I reckon my dreams leak into all kinds of ideas but most of my ideas are pulled from things I’ve experienced. The only project I’ve actively tried to draw ideas from dreams from was a VR piece I’ve been working on for a few years called ‘Mundania’. It was created in this weird time where I kept having more and more elaborate, lucid dreams so wrote them all down. The dreams all took place in this weird city that resembled what I’d imagine LA to look like – a weird, real-life GTA map. When I started making this project, I used these locations as influence and secretly added loads of them to the map of the VR experience… that’s a little nugget I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone before… You’ve actually inspired me I might re-start my dream diary.

Poppy: How would you describe the music video in one sentence?

JOCELYN: Originally, it was: a woman becoming her wild self…it was always about an agrophobic woman finding and embracing herself among a world of strangers and outcasts, and becoming herself in another world. A sci-fi fever dream…

Holly: Next album name?

Rosy: That’s nice to say as well…write that DOWN.

JOCELYN: That’s what I said! Literally that was my tagline…those mofos stole it! That’s not a sentence, it’s a phrase! Ok hold on…I’m getting the treatment up…yep. Sci-fi fever dream. Wow this treatment is great. Ok fine it is a sci-fi fever dream and I’m jealous they remembered that tagline.

• You can watch the music video for ‘Sad Cowboy’ here.