everything goes wrong

Free. I was finally free of these blog­gers, their unre­lenting rumi­na­tion upon modern music and their end­less clever metaphors. No longer would I have to act as one of them. I had seen my chance, and I had made a break for it. But they were not far behind. I fled down a crowded street, pushing people out of my way. My pulse was pounding in my ears. My feet were pounding on the pave­ment. My heart was pounding in my chest. Oh, god, I thought despair­ingly, my inner mono­logue is so fucking repet­i­tive. Ahead, a bar loomed, a beacon of beery hope in an end­less night. Grate­fully I dove through the door. In the instant before I slammed it shut behind me, I thought I heard a dis­tant, deri­sive, and somehow tri­umphant laugh. But sud­denly all sounds of pur­suit had gone. A man blocked my path and loudly demanded a ticket. I began to sputter my way through some expla­na­tion and pat my pockets, for lack of any­thing else to do, and was sur­prised to find a slip of paper already in my right hand. Con­fused, I handed it over to the man. He gazed at it, nodded, and let me through. Dozens of people already filled the dark, humid space. I picked my way through the crowd, hoping I would be able to hide in here for a couple of hours. Then I saw it. A stage. A band set­ting up. A pit of despair opened sud­denly in my gut, like a sink­hole beneath a Florida residence.

Crap, I thought. They’re going to make me write about this.

On the 8^th of March, Vivian Girls played Great Scott in Boston. They’ve been sub­ject to a bit of hype, so you might know of them already, but in any event, they’re a guitar-bass-drums girl band from Brooklyn. Their music, the first album in par­tic­ular, con­sists of fuzzy gui­tars and low-key melodic vocals with an almost lazy-sounding beat. Some might com­pare it to shoegaze. Their second album moves away from this some­what, with noisier guitar, pounding bass, and a little more emphasis on the vocals.

Seeing them live, it’s clear that, con­trary to what one might gather from lis­tening to their recorded work, they enjoy playing with a lot of energy and making a great deal of noise. Guitar work that can often seem indis­tinct and jangly on the album was instead played fast and aggres­sively. Vocals that some­times seem flat and emo­tion­less on the recorded tracks were instead shouted into the mic. You get the idea. This is one of those bands that’s a totally dif­ferent expe­ri­ence live.

They opened with “I Have No Fun,” the second track from Every­thing Goes Wrong, their most recent album, which imme­di­ately got the crowd moving. They also played sev­eral songs from the self-titled first album; for instance, “Tell The World” got people cheering after four notes from the bass. One song was announced to be brand new and was played for the first time that night. It hints at a promising future, though I didn’t catch what it was called. All in all, it was a good night, but let me give you the highlights.

Vivian Girls — “Wild Eyes“
This is the first song the band was known for, and I sus­pect it’s on the inevitable list of “songs we’re sup­posed to play” that all bands seem to even­tu­ally accu­mu­late. It can be found on their first album, where its sub­dued har­monies and simple, steady beat per­fectly exem­plify the band’s style at the time. They played it as their second-to-last song, and got through what’s two min­utes on the album in per­haps a minute and a half of noisy guitar, aggres­sive bass, and an energy that, unfor­tu­nately, isn’t quite there in the recording. Hype aside, the dif­fer­ence between what this band was doing in 2008 and what they’re doing now shows that they’re only get­ting better.

Vivian Girls — “Out for the Sun“
What can I say about this song? It’s from their second album, and it wasn’t my favorite before I saw them play, but it is now. About a minute into the song, the vocals drop away to fea­ture the guitar for a full two min­utes. Two gui­tars are present in the album recording, but with only one gui­tarist in the band, those of us at the show instead saw a full-on old-fashioned drop-to-your-knees-and-thrash guitar solo that forced the crowd to grad­u­ally stop dancing and simply stare in awe. After­ward, the song proper resumes at a faster tempo, pounding bass and drums leading the way to three crashing closing notes. Two people beside me had come for one of the opening acts and had no idea who the Vivian Girls were, but after this song I saw them turn and word­lessly nod to each other. Def­i­nitely the high­light of the night.

The band is still on tour and I rec­om­mend checking them out if they’re going to be near you. In the mean­time, you can find their record­ings over at Red Records.