Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
(In The Red)

So, ‘difficult second album’ time for the VGs, and, boy, they’ve really taken that ‘difficult second album’ conceit and gone to town with it.

One thing ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the refining/reframing of the band’s pop song-writing sensibilities that would have seemed the natural next step for them, as suggested by all those tantalising pre-album singles cuts that threatened to win over doubters by amping up the three-part harmonies and the just-plain-beautiful melodies.

Another thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the potentially promising move toward a more strung out, ragged glory kinda sound, as trailed by the album artwork, and the profusion of four minute plus songs with names like ‘The Desert’ and 'Out For The Sun'.

Those were my best pre-listening guesses and expectations. But as becomes clear pretty quickly after actually dropping the needle on this one, my best guesses and expectations can fuck off. No outreach to a wider audience is to be found herein, and no pleasant developments for existing fans either. No pop, no style - they strictly roots. The roots in question here are punk, and as such ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ comes on like a total assault.

Well, maybe assault isn’t quite the right word – assault suggests an attack, whereas this album is all about defence, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Point is: I don’t suppose many people were expecting Vivian Girls to bounce back with an LP that’s as bleak and relentless and punishing as any grim-faced hardcore/noise band’s opus. I’m sure nobody asked them to make one. But they made it anyway – take it or leave it.

One more thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ is NOT, contrary to what some reviewers still insist, is lo-fi. This record was made in a studio on a record label advance, and, y’know, I’m sure they had people around who knew where to put the microphones and stuff – fidelity-wise, it’s as loud and clear as you like. The fact it STILL sounds like a chaotic maelstrom of roar and clang, with buried vocals and excessive reverb and accidental open string skree, is simply a reflection of the kind of noise these girls want to make.

That the songs here sound like brooding playground chants, with flat, brutal, monotone choruses that are hammered home again and again like anxious, narcissistic curses and banishment rituals – I have no fun; I can’t get over you; this is the end; you don't even seem to care; don't turn around and miss me when I’m gone - that’s deliberate.

That Ali Koehler just won’t let up on that fucking ride cymbal at all, ever, beating it into your skull until you feel like jumping in front of a train – that’s deliberate too.

And that Cassie’s guitar sounds gigantic and screechy and wrong, dominating the mix like a whole room full of suffocating solid state Fender amps wheezing out their last trebley death rattles as they crawl over each others corpses, looking for a place to die..? – yeah, that’s how she wants it to sound.

The idea of self-defined, punk-birthed musicians paying tribute to the mechanised emotion of girl group pop is a fascinating one, and it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s become a pretty ubiquitous notion in pop culture over the past few years. Which is no bad thing, obviously – it’s easy and fun to tip a wink to the classics and vamp on some Spector-isms. But what sets the Vivian Girls apart, particularly on this LP, is that they approach this terrain with the spirit of total, deadly seriousness that’s necessary to give such angst-driven material life, recognising the Spector/Morton canon for the bloody heart of darkness it is, and responding in kind with an album that’s dead-eyed, blank-faced, introverted and drained of all the usual affectations and signifiers. It’s got its fingers in its ears, and it’s not listening, especially not to YOU. Tantrum music.

Like the classic NY girl group productions, ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ strikes me as an urban record – a barrier to block out the noise of the city, to create a safe space for internalised melodrama to thrive. This album is the sound of The Shangri-Las out on their own, beaten, rejected and building a wall; a wall the like of which those fucking producers couldn’t even imagine. Not an exotic, enticing wall to trap the listeners inside, but a razor-wire topped prison wall of senseless repetition and tinnitus-inducing distortion, compressed to fuck to keep the hurt inside and keep EVERYONE. ELSE. OUT. Just like some pissed off hardcore kid jamming a tape in his walkman circa 1985.

Inevitably there are moments where individual songs make an impression – “Can’t Get Over You” might as well have “STAND-OUT TRACK” written next to it in permanent marker and “Before I Start To Cry” plays the bittersweet closing credits tearjerker ok – but song-wise there’s nothing here to rival my beloved “Where Do You Run To” (which, er, it turns out was written by acrimoniously departed drummer Frankie Rose anyway – just as well I wasn’t fool enough to shout for it when I saw ‘em play). This is an album that works more as a total, unified sound thing than as a collection of songs. Like an early Husker Du record, it’s a wall-to-wall whiteout, burying triumph and disappointment alike beneath a uniform, tar-covered roar.

If you find yourself navigating rush hour public transport with your heart torn out at any point in the near future (I’ve not recently, glad to say), this is the album you’ll need. You might not like the sound of it much now, as you hang about at home chopping vegetables or making tea or whatever, and it’s probably freaking out the cat, but trust me: keep it on standby. This is ugly, gut-level pop, exhilarating, broken-hearted punk rock, and when the time comes you can crawl inside it like a cocoon. It won’t make you feel better, but it’ll make you not feel dead, and that’s a start. I like music like that.

Mp3> The End

Buy Links: Norman, In The Red

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Labels: album reviews, The Vivian Girls