GGOOLLDD

GGOOLLDD singer Margaret Butler never could resist a spectacle. Even during her years as a clothing designer, she came to realize she was more excited by the planning and production involved in fashion shows than by the clothes themselves. In GGOOLLDD, a synth-pop band that cut its teeth playing Milwaukee house parties before quickly graduating to bigger stages, Butler found an even more hands-on outlet for her inner showman: a canvas as glittering as any fashion show, but at once louder and much more intimate. Years after the group’s 2014 debut EP $Tandards$, those performer’s instincts continue to drive the band, albeit in some very different directions. Time has trimmed the group from a five-piece to a trio, and the music, in turn, has grown fiercer. On GGOOLLDD’s new album Here We Are, the group’s synth-rock—“dungeon disco” is their preferred term—is still pop-forward, but now it’s darker, nastier. The guitars snarl, and so does Butler. As she tells it, she’s spent the last four years growing progressively more pissed off, and on Here We Are, she makes no attempts to suppress the internalized rage that’s rattled in her head every day since 2016. “There’s a reason that I made the band name obnoxious and huge and in all caps,” Butler says. “That’s the vibe we’re trying to give off. Once you’ve established that, it’s kind of hard to fuck it up.”