Goddess’ self-titled debut album arrives like a thunderclap: bold, cinematic, and unapologetically raw. The brainchild of Fay Milton, formerly of Savages, Goddess is a collaborative project that brings together a wide spectrum of artists, with every track featuring a different guest. Rather than serving as a rotating spotlight, these features deepen the emotional and sonic palette of the album, creating a cohesive yet unpredictable journey through alt-pop, industrial textures, and charged lyricism. It’s a record that doesn’t just introduce a new project, it establishes a collective force, with Milton as its driving pulse, uniting voices in vulnerability, rage, beauty, and power. Milton’s choice of ten different vocalists on the album is an extraordinary message, one that highlights the talents of ten different female / non-binary artists that all bring their unique flair to each track.
Little Dark kicks off the showcase of talent on ‘Goddess’. Featuring Shingai of The Noisettes, Little Dark is a brooding, magnetic standout that distills the collaborative spirit of the project into something both intimate and expansive. Built on a pulsing, slow-burning rhythm, the track simmers with restrained tension, allowing space for each sonic element to breathe. Shingai’s voice glides through the track like smoke, velvety and sharp all at once, delivering lines with a commanding presence that’s both ethereal and grounded in deep emotional undercurrents. Fay Milton’s production feels meticulous yet organic, anchoring the track in sparse percussion, warped synths, and eerie atmospherics that ripple with unease. The interplay between Shingai’s vocals and the minimalist, noir-tinged instrumentation creates a hypnotic tension, one that speaks more in mood than volume. Little Dark is a strong start to the album.
‘Shadows’ featuring Ex:Re is a hushed, glacial meditation on absence, memory, and the quiet weight of emotional residue. Built around minimalist textures and a ghostly ambiance, the track feels suspended in time, almost like walking through a dream just beginning to fray at the edges. Ex:Re (AKA Elena Tonra of Daughter) brings her signature intimacy to the vocals, delivering each line with a tremble that suggests both fragility and quiet resilience. Her voice barely rises above a whisper, yet it cuts through the stillness with devastating clarity. The song leans into restraint, using silence and space as instruments in themselves, creating an atmosphere that feels simultaneously intimate and vast.
Animal is a snarling, hypnotic dive into instinct, desire, and defiance. It’s one of the album’s most rhythm-forward tracks, with a driving pulse that feels both primal and controlled—like something caged just beneath the surface. Delilah Holliday brings a steely cool to the vocals, weaving between spoken word, half-sung lines, and a detached, almost menacing delivery that perfectly mirrors the track’s tension. Fay Milton’s production is taut and industrial, there’s a sense of controlled chaos throughout: textures shift, rhythms fracture, but everything remains tightly coiled. The track thrives on contrast: aggression and restraint, clarity and distortion, power and vulnerability. Animal doesn’t aim to comfort—it prowls, it confronts, and it commands. It’s a bold high point in Goddess, showcasing how raw collaboration can still feel razor-sharp in its execution.
Fuckboy featuring Salvia isn’t just another track on the album—it’s a full-bodied exorcism of romantic disappointment and sexual expression, delivered with venom, glamour, and scorched-earth honesty. The track explodes like a Molotov cocktail hurled straight at fragile male egos and empowering strong women. The song returns the power back to the women, turning modern dating’s toxicity into a war cry. Salvia, known for their striking visual persona and raw emotional delivery, brings a distorted, almost demonic flair to the feature—less a guest verse, more a haunted mirror reflecting the song’s core. Production-wise, the beat is stripped-down but nasty, with metallic clangs and blown-out bass that feel more weaponized than rhythmic. There’s little softness here—no emotional nuance, no room for forgiveness. It’s theatrical, furious, and cathartic in a way that feels intentionally messy.
Golden finds Goddess at their most restrained and cinematic. Driven by atmospheric production and anchored by tight, brooding percussion, the track unfolds like a slow exhale of pain. Featuring a beautifully haunting vocal performance from Shadow Stevie, it’s a song that drips with emotional residue and quiet rage. What sets Golden apart is its tension. Every beat feels considered, every sonic choice precise. Milton’s drumming doesn’t dominate—it guides, offering a heartbeat beneath the haze. There’s a push and pull here between vulnerability and control, between the organic and the electronic, that gives the track its edge. The result is a song that’s emotionally raw but musically polished—less of a pop track, more of an immersive mood piece.
Closing out their self-titled debut, Goddess’ cover of Nina Simone’s 22nd Century feels less like an ending and more like a transmission from what comes after. It’s a stark, pulsing reinterpretation that drags Simone’s skeletal original into a fully realized dystopian soundscape—equal parts industrial, hypnotic, and eerily beautiful. Fay Milton’s drumming is at its most surgical here: crisp, unrelenting, and mechanical. The production surrounding it hums with metallic textures and synthetic decay—glitchy synths, echoing static, and a sense of looming machinery that never quite breaks. The track doesn’t build so much as it advances, steady and inevitable. Harriet Rock’s vocals are a perfect foil to the tension: smooth, restrained, and emotionally distant. She doesn’t echo Simone’s rawness—instead, she offers a chilling calm, like the voice of someone who’s seen the collapse and kept walking. Her presence gives the track an eerie poise, anchoring the abstraction in something human—but only just. As the final statement on Goddess, 22nd Century crystallizes the project’s themes perfectly.
As a debut, Goddess doesn’t just announce itself: it arrives fully formed, striding through genres and moods with purpose and precision. Across ten tracks, each fronted by a different vocalist, the album becomes a collage of feminine expression: wounded, defiant, ethereal, furious. Yet despite the variety of voices, the project never feels scattered. Fay Milton’s drumming is the spine—tight, deliberate, and unshakably cool—while the production creates a world that’s as emotionally rich as it is sonically brutal. There’s a sense of tension that runs through the entire album: between softness and steel, vulnerability and control, beauty and abrasion. Whether it’s the scorched glamour of Fuckboy, the icy hush of Golden, or the dystopian finality of 22nd Century, Goddess manages to hold space for contradiction without losing focus. This is a record that thrives in liminality—between club and ritual, memory and warning, collapse and transcendence. More than a collection of songs, Goddess feels like a statement of intent. It’s a blueprint for a new kind of power: shared, shapeshifting, and unmistakably feminine.
For fans of: Savages, Cloth, Friend Of A Friend
‘Goddess’ by Goddess is out now on Bella Union.
Words by Ell Bradbury
