The Vivian Girls – self-titled
(Mauled By Tigers/In The Red, 2008)

I wrote this for the new issue of Beard (due soonish!), but In The Red's reissue of the album is finally in the shops, so I want to draw folks attention to it - hope nobody minds me duplicating it here. Not that the record needs any more hype, but hey, actually, it's great to see a new band I can relate to / a new band who really deserve it (delete as applicable) getting the big media buzz for once. I'll be going to see 'em play at The Windmill in December! Can't wait!

Subject of a rising tide of blog-hype that sees them mentioned in the same breath as such lo-fi chancers as Eat Skull and Times New Viking, listeners in search of the latest outsider skree may be surprised to discover that Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls are initially a dead ringer for, well… The Shop Assistants. The sing-song melodies and echoes of ‘60s girl-group pop, the frantic, stand-up drumming at hardcore tempo, gloriously messy live-to-tape recording and skin-peeling early JAMC distortion – it’s all here, though admittedly with the C86 giddiness kicked out in favour of deadpan NY cool.

That’s the formula, and as far as formulas go, you’d better believe it's a good one. But there’s more to the Vivian Girls than that. There’s something that’s hard to define creeping around the edges, something timeless that reveals scene-making hype for the sad joke it is, and that makes this record, this band, very special indeed.

The brittle love chants of “Wild Eyes” and “Tell the World” and corresponding temper tantrums “No” and “I Believe In Nothing” are almost vicious in their simplicity and emotional directness, dragged straight from the brain of any film noir teenage daughter of yesteryear, trying to make sense of a threatening, staccato black & white world. Pure, sinister, feminine rock n’ roll. But the girls wait until the stunning “Where Do You Run To” to really hit their stride, slowing down to a brooding, mid-tempo psychedelia, leaving shivering harmonies and tamed feedback hanging in the air like a frozen moment in some David Lynch directed dancehall of the soul – orange moon sinking on the horizon, sunglasses on stage, and there’s something bad waiting outside, but that’s ok, cos you’ll never have to go there.

Here is the kind of ineffable suburban teenage forever that Spector/Wilson wannabe producers sweat over their LA studio consoles for years to fleetingly recapture, reborn as a ragged punk howl and laid down raw and alive by three girls with little more than a couple of mics and a reverb unit. Such is the joy of life in 2008.

Mp3s >

Wild Eyes
No

http://www.myspace.com/viviangirlsnyc

Buy, etc: http://www.intheredrecords.com/

Labels: album reviews, pop, punk, The Vivian Girls