www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYFeHVkFLBY

The new Vivian Girls album Share The Joy is out today. Vivian Girls has this vibe that is so mellow it becomes exciting. And when the music is exciting it still carries that mellow agitation that makes it doubly exciting. The video for “I Heard You Say” embodies a similar idea in the ‘I’m so cold I’m on fire’ moment at the end. “I” am one extreme at the other. You can stream the whole album on NPR.

—Daiana Feuer

On Tuesday, February 22nd, at the Smell, FYF gave us an amazingly line-up: Cold Showers, Catwalk, Austra, and Vivian Girls. This was Vivian Girls’ of Brooklyn’s first show in L.A. in over a year, according to bassist/vocalist Katy Goodman, so the show was crowded with devoted fans. The Smell usually offers $5 shows and, despite the raised price of $8, this one sold out quickly. I waited outside for about 20 minutes next to a dumpster that reeked of piss, and the doors opened right at 8:30, just like they said they would. Cold Showers got the night started a few minutes after 9pm.

Cold Showers had a short set, and my immediate response to them saying “We’re Cold Showers” was, “I like hot showers,” to which my friend responded, “Taking this a bit too literal.” We enjoyed their ’80s sound. They often gave me a Pixies or Joy Division feel, and I was pleasantly surprised since this was the first time I had heard them. Their songs were generally slow-paced and sort of quiet, but a few of them kicked in and got me dancing.

Next up was Catwalk, a three piece band of guys that are obviously passionate about their music. The singer always had an intense face, and the drummer looked like he was psyched to be there as he kept giggling and looking at his band mates. My favorite song was their second, “Please Don’t Break Me.” They harmonized beautifully, with a bass that complimented the guitar, not just following it, but taking on its own sound. Catwalk followed Cold Showers wonderfully with a similar ’80s sound that we all adored. Another song I really loved was their last, “Baby Please,” which the singer sang passionately, and they all ended their set happily, which made us all feel good as well. This band was also new to me, and I was overjoyed at this point to have heard two phenomenal bands whose shows I could now frequent.

Catwalk

The third band up was Austra, an electronic band from Toronto. This band was definitely ’80s reminiscent, but in a different way from the previous bands. It contained backtracking, keyboard, bass, drums, and the very powerful voice of Katie Stelmanis. My first impression was that their music was far more serious than fun and upbeat like the previous bands. Katie’s voice is beautiful and has a lot of range. The song that stood out from their set was “Beat And The Pulse,” which reminded me heavily of an Annie Lennox song. The bass was pulsating and strong, just like Katie’s voice. Being the complete opposite of serious, I felt a bit out of place with such serious music and the serious attitudes of the musicians. Yet I was definitely pleased with their talent and catchy songs—another band worth keeping tabs on.

The Smell suddenly got super crowded, to the point where I could barely move. Vivian Girls quickly got on stage and they started out with “Never See Me Again,” from their first album, Vivian Girls. This song is incredibly fast-paced, and the crowd was ecstatic about it and began moshing right away. Next was “Can’t Get Over You,” from their second album, Everything Goes Wrong—a song that gets stuck in your head easily, played at a pace that had us dancing and moshing. Then came the slower 2nd track, “I Heard You Say,” from their new album due in April, Share the Joy. I hadn’t heard this one yet, and I really liked Katy’s harmonizing backup. They also performed the 1st track from Share The Joy, “The Other Girls,” a playful song which guitarist/vocalist Cassie Ramone sings with her out-of-tune-in-the-best-way-possible style. They followed with a track from their 1st, “Wild Eyes” which is my favorite song by them. It is upbeat and catchy and embodies their noise. Next was “Lake House,” from Share The Joy, which displays their common kick-snare-kick-snare drumbeat and the addictive pairing of Cassie and Katy’s voices. They alternated Share The Joy—Everything Goes Wrong—Share The Joy—Everything Goes Wrong with “Death,” “When I’m Gone,” “Sixteen Ways,” and “Survival.” “Death” reminds me of “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies because Cassie straight up talks in the beginning of it. “When I’m Gone” has an addictive drum beat, “Sixteen Ways” is another new hit, and “Survival,” an old favorite. They slowed things down with “Before I Start To Cry” from Everything, a song about “ex-boyfriends and love.” They played “Dance (If You Wanna)” from Share The Joy, which reminds me of an Okmoniks type 1960s garage song. They came out for an encore that the moshers went crazy for and went back stage, where I followed to talk to current drummer Fiona Campbell about their superb set and finish off my FYF night at the Smell.

—Alyssa Holland

The Smell was sold out for the Vivian Girls and Best Coast Saturday night. Best Coast’s set was great with Vivan Girls’ drummer sitting in with them. Their leader seemed a bit shy on stage but sang beautifully. Vivian Girls put on an excellent set and the crowd went nuts throughout the entire show.

[View with PicLens]

12►

[View with PicLens]

—juan velasquez

Abe Vigoda, whose frontman Michael Vidal talked to L.A. Record about being one of 2009′s Most Beautiful People, will tour with Vampire Weekend this spring. Info and dates below:

In addition to the Vampire Weekend dates, the boys will also be playing a handful of shows with Nottingham punks Lovvers, Vivian Girls, Effi Briest and Gringo Star. Abe Vigoda will be debuting some brand new tracks from the yet to be titled follow-up to the Reviver EP, set for release sometime this summer on PostPresentMedium. Listen to a demo of the new track “Crush” here.

## = w. Effi Briest

VIVIAN GIRLS + BEST COAST ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, AT THE SMELL, 247 S MAIN ST, LOS ANGELES, $5, ALL AGES.

Oddly enough, the opening act—The Beets—kind of is the male Vivian Girls.   A four-piece band of boys that sings songs about failed relationships with females: “Who will ride your bike/Who will fly your kite/When your lungs are not as strong/Whose gonna sing your song?” (“For You”).  Of course, they sound like a ’60s boy group rather than girl group, and have traded harmonies in favor of singing together on the same note.  This gives the effect of a chanting choir of boys.  Like Vivian Girls, The Beets gained momentum playing house shows around New York City and befriending “the right people.”  For this tour, Vivian Girls happened to be “the right people.”  After a performance involving little movement besides on-going knee bending and torso swaying, I was left yawning and in desperate need of another beer.

Vivian Girls left much to be desired as well.  Lead singer Cassie Ramone’s cute outfit and dreamy eyes could only hold me over for so long.  I understand why they built their following playing Brooklyn house shows.  The pretentious see-and-be-scene L.A. crowd was too cool to get into the music and did little more than sway throughout their set.  Luckily, for those in the know, both The Beets and Vivian Girls played a house show in Highland Park the next day.  The back yard housed about one hundred kids who weren’t too cool to get down (the $1 Colt 45’s helped).  The impromptu house show allowed me to see Vivian Girls in their element and save this from being a (reluctantly) bad review.  Sometimes the venue and crowd really can put a damper on what otherwise could have been a fun show—as was the case with Vivian Girls.  This band is best viewed with close friends in a tight space with malt liquor in hand.

—Ilyse Kaplan

Download: Vivian Girls “When I’m Gone”

(from Everything Goes Wrong out now on In The Red)

Vivian Girls weathered a year of touring and Internet comments and took the photo for their new album cover on the day they almost broke up three times. Cassie Ramone speaks now before tour with New York City’s Beets. This interview by Vanessa Gonzalez.

You’ve been home for the whole summer after touring pretty non-stop. What was it like readjusting to home life?
Cassie Ramone (guitar/vocals): For me it was really good because at that point, touring had gotten to be so stressful and it wasn’t fun anymore after two and a half months. I feel like after the two months point we had kind of hit a second wind, but then right before we got home it was like, ‘Oh my God, we are all so tired.’ We had just spent way too much time with each other in a row. So for me, the beginning of being back home was great. Seeing all my other friends was wonderful and getting some space. But now we’re getting ready to go back out for two months again.
What does it feel like when you’ve hit that wall of it not being fun anymore?
For me it kind of feels like you’re a psychologist. You’re doing character studies on three different people. I kind of felt like I was analyzing Katy and Allie and Mark’s personalities to death, and it wasn’t fun, you know? Because you spend so much time with them, and all you do is talk to them, and then it’s like, ‘Let me figure out what these people are REALLY about.’ Even though that’s not what you WANT to think about, that’s what I end up thinking about—which isn’t fun for me because they’re my friends. I don’t want to spend that much time thinking about their inner workings, you know?
So you didn’t have the typical post-tour depression?
Maybe there was a tiny little element of that. Overall, we were all really happy to be home.
I always felt the same way coming back from tour. Just being able to open the fridge and make myself food or…
EXACTLY! Yeah, definitely. That’s one thing that I missed a lot, actually—being able to cook for myself. That really affected me. I love to cook.
The last album you had drawn the cover, and this one looks like a photograph. What’s the story behind it?
I also designed the cover for this record. It’s a photo that I took on tour. I took it from the car while the car was driving down the highway. It’s on I-10 in west Texas, right outside of Van Horn. I really liked that photo because there’s a V on the mountain. The V stands for Van Horn, but in this case it stands for Vivian, and there are three shrubs in the photo—like the three of us. Three lonely shrubs in a deserted wilderness trying to face a mountain of obstacles. I think that landscape really caught my interest because a lot of that drive is really post-apocalyptic, and a lot of it is really beautiful too. So I was taking a lot of pictures on that specific drive, but I don’t usually take pictures out the car window.
Do you remember what your mental state about tour was at that time?
That was on our first full U.S. tour. Frankie was still in the band. That was the day that we almost broke up three times! Yeah, that was a day that we all got into fights. Me and Frankie got into a fight, Frankie and Katy got into a fight, and then me and Katy got into a fight. That actually a really, really rough day. I remember we did our first full interview that day. We did it in the Subway—the restaurant—and that caused a big fight. It was so brutally hot, and I had just gotten out of the hospital because I had bronchitis or something. I spent the entire morning in the hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, and then we got out and everybody was in a bad mood. It was so hot and we’re driving through the middle of the desert—scorching heat. That was actually a really brutal day.
Did that day inspire the title of the album, ‘Everything Goes Wrong?’
No, the title of the album was actually taken from a song lyric. We were mixing the album in Costa Mesa and when we were mixing the song ‘When I’m Gone,’ one of the lines is ‘When everything goes wrong / will you sit around and miss me when I’m gone?’ We were mixing that song, so we were listening to it over and over and over and Ali just said, ‘Hey, why don’t we name the album “Everything Goes Wrong”?’And then me and Katy thought that that was a really good idea because we thought that that fit the theme of the album really well. Because the album is pretty… pretty dark… pretty apocalyptic… definitely not a happy album by any means, so we thought it made a lot of sense.
So you had the title before you picked the picture?
No, the picture was taken in 2008 and the…
No, I know you HAD the picture, but before you decided on using it had you already come up with the album’s title?
That’s actually a really good question. Working on the album cover was a really slow process. I was looking through all my old photos, and I scanned a bunch of stuff and then I was thinking about what to do for it. So I think the album cover may have been partially completed at that point, but it didn’t look like it does on the finished product.
That’s such a wonderful cosmic accident—the title and the day that the photo was taken… everything came together so perfectly. It all makes sense.
Totally. And I didn’t even think about—until just right now—about how bad that day was and how that photo was taken on like, the worst day ever. That is pretty cosmic.
Can we talk about the Stereogum interview where they say that you hate normal people?
The Stereogum interview wasn’t even for Stereogum—it was for uncensoredinterview.com, which I had never heard of before doing it. It was the kind of a thing where Daniel, our publicist, was like, ‘Hey, you have this thing to do. Get to this apartment by noon.’ And I was kind of in a bad mood because I didn’t really want to be there. But then we actually ended up having a really good time there because the man and the woman doing the interview were really nice. And then when we saw them we ended up thinking a few of the clips were really funny so we posted two of them on our blog. And they were sitting on the blog for like, two months. Nobody said anything about it. And then somebody tipped Stereogum off, and was like, ‘Hey, this is probably going to offend people. Why don’t you put this on your website?’ So they posted that one interview on the website and people just freaked out!
The interview tag says: ‘They Hate You For Not Choosing To Be In A Punk Band.’
I think it was completely out of control. I feel like if you are a part of a subculture—which we are and all of our friends are, and I assumed that pretty much everybody who had even heard about our band at that point was a part of this kind of subculture—it’s completely normal to make fun of quote/unquote, normal people every so often. It’s not like you hate them. It’s not like you think it’s stupid that they’re not in a punk band. It’s like, you know, you lead different lifestyles. And they probably make fun of you. You can make fun of them. It’s not a big deal, you know? It’s true that I think the punk community is a great thing to be a part of, and I would personally feel lost without it. I guess that might not be true for other people, but it’s something that is kind of my lifeline, you know? And at that point I think I kind of assumed that—I think I assumed that everybody who had even heard of our band would feel the same way. But then I guess I was wrong.
How did reading comments like, ‘they’re dead to me now’ make you feel?
It actually made me cry—like, multiple times. And it still frustrates me to this day because people treat that interview like it’s our mission statement when it’s just this stupid interview that we did one time in the context of a million other stupid interviews that were obviously not that serious. We were being completely ridiculous in all of them. So people treat that interview like it’s our mission statement, and like, what we’re all about, when we’re actually about so many other things… like, SO much more than that stupid interview. But that’s all people seem to focus on. I think at some point we were making fun of people that go to TGI Friday’s or something like that and then that got turned into us hating every single person with a job, and that turned into us hating working class joes. But it’s like quote/unquote working class joes aren’t the kind of people that eat at TGI Friday’s. It’s so ridiculous what the reaction to that was like. We weren’t even being serious in half of it.
I don’t want to dwell on emotional stuff necessarily, so we can skip this, but do you mind talking about what it was specifically about this that made you cry?
Yeah, it’s just that—I think I’m a pretty nice person, and I know that Katy and Ali are really good people too, and for people to hate us for something that we don’t even like, that we aren’t even passionate about… I feel like it’s really unfair. Because I’m the kind of person that will give anybody a chance and I think it’s just people wanting to take out feelings of jealousy or resentment on us for no reason and that turning into hatred. I don’t know… it’s a really childish answer but people being mean to me always affects me, even to this day.
Is this type of thing something that you are encountering more as your popularity grows—the side of humanity that tries to tear down what’s on top?
Definitely. I haven’t encountered very much of that in real life. Luckily in real life people are generally nicer to me than they ever were, but whenever I get into the habit of reading bad things on the internet I’m like, ‘Shit! People are brutal.’ So I try to avoid reading the Internet whenever possible.
The beach seems to have a strong influence upon you. Where does that come from? You didn’t grow up by the beach, did you?
Not so close to it. I grew up maybe four hours from the beach in New Jersey. My family was never that much of a beach family. They’re more of like… woods people. They like to hike. But every summer until I was eight, we went to Cape Cod for a week and that’s one of my favorite childhood memories. I don’t know—I think the beach is a really magical place. Whenever I’m there it’s just overwhelmingly… serene, you know what I mean? It fills me with this feeling that I don’t really feel any other time. I just think it’s like a really magical thing to be at the beach. Always. I’m also a Pisces, and it’s a water sign, so I guess that might also have something to do with it because I totally believe in astrology.
How strongly do you follow astrology?
I don’t follow day to day astrology so strongly because I feel like whenever I read daily horoscopes they conflict with one another, but I totally believe in the zodiac. And whenever I find out what sign one of my friends is, I feel like, ‘Oh, that makes a lot of sense.’ So I read a lot about the different signs, and what it means to be that sign.
You had said that the new album has a lot of darker themes in it. Why do you think that’s occurring when it would appear that things are going so positively for you guys?
Because even though the band’s career in 2008 seemed to be doing so well, a lot of things did go really badly for me—and us—in 2008. Like, I had this entire string of failed relationships, one bad one after another. One of my best friends died, and that was really hard for me. and everybody in our group of friends. It was a real tragedy. He was only 25. What else happened? The album also deals with the way gaining more success in your band strains relationships because that definitely happened a little bit last year. So that’s pretty much it. That’s most of what the album revolves around. Bad relationships, strains on relationships… I think the second album is way more universal than the second album. The first one was pretty much all love songs. It pretty much read like a diary. I think the second album reads more like a journey.
How does the band’s success strain relationships?
Before we ever gained any recognition, we were just three punk girls living in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and then when the band started taking off we had all these existing relationships that we thought were set in stone. When the band took off, dynamics changed. With that, relationships changed. That’s not to say that that’s happened a lot. But the few times that it has happened, it’s really affected us.
Is it the lack of time you can invest in the relationship, like you’re just doing more band stuff? Or does success change the interpersonal psychology within the relationship?
It more changes the interpersonal psychology. But the songs that deal with that aren’t that specific. It’s more vague.
How’s it been for you being in an all-girl band? Do you ever get disparaging or condescending comments in regards to your gender?
OH yeah! ALWAYS! And it’s funny because when the band started I never thought that we would get that. Because when it started we were in this community that on the surface is kind of very equal-rights oriented. Pretty much everybody we know supports women in music and so on. And all our friends at first were super-supportive of us. So the fact that people would be discriminating against us because we’re women is something that never even occurred to us. But around the time the band started to take off a little bit, that’s around the time that we realized that the world wasn’t so perfect. There’s actually a song on the second album about that. It’s the second to last song—it’s called, ‘You’re My Guy.’ The song is made to seem like it’s a boyfriend/girlfriend song, but it’s not. The guy in the title that we’re referring to is the listener, the blog reader, the male so-called music fan that judges us just because we’re women. And subsequently makes us feel like shit. Because he either talks about our looks, or makes comments like, ‘If they were a band of unattractive guys, nobody would like them, or give them a second chance.’ So that’s basically who the guy is. We are talking to him in that song.
Is it tongue-in-cheek? What are you saying?
You’ll have to listen to the song to find out. I wrote that song not too long after the interview came out on Stereogum. That’s when I was most upset about this kind of stuff.
I noticed a lot of appearance-oriented comments.
It’s complete bullshit! Like, what do you care how we look like? Sometimes I feel like the way we look has actually hurt us rather than helped us because that’s what people tend to focus on first sometimes. When in reality it doesn’t matter.
Does it make you more image-focused or does it make you want to retreat from it even more?
I feel like we’ve all been dealing with it in different ways. But I think overall we all kind of don’t want to veer too far in either direction. We’re definitely not going to turn into supermodel looking girls because of blog comments because that’s ridiculous. We’re also not going to walk around with paper bags on our heads. We’re just going to be ourselves.
I’m thinking about artists like PJ Harvey and Liz Phair who didn’t start out sexualized but ended up going in that direction. It seems like there’s a glass ceiling for female artists and if they don’t adopt the sex-symbol appearance then they won’t break through it. Is that something that you ever think about having to confront?
I don’t think that that is something that’ll ever happen to us. I think that first of all we’re extremely surprised that we even got to the level that we’re at today, so I don’t feel the need to get to a higher level of popularity. And I definitely don’t want to do that through looks.
If Clairol wanted you guys to do a hair dye commercial, would you do it?
I bet I would do it. But just because I DO use Clairol hair dye.

VIVIAN GIRLS WITH THE BEETS AND THE BLACK AND WHITE YEARS ON FRI., SEPT. 11, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8PM / $10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VIVIAN GIRLS’ EVERYTHING GOES WRONG IS OUT NOW ON IN THE RED. VISIT VIVIAN GIRLS AT VIVIANGIRLS.NET OR AT MYSPACE.COM/VIVANGIRLSNYC.

All I’ve got to show from Coachella is a sunburn, a pimple, and a busted bottom lip. While there, I enjoyed: half-assed ass shaking to Crystal Castles, Ting Tings, and Girl Talk; Morrissey looking bloated but still croonin’ like a pro; Paul McCartney singing me to sleep as I lay in my tent; worrying that Ariel Pink was either going to melt or collapse into a pile of dust when exposed to daylight; watching Liars (featuring Alex Myrvold of Pizza!) squirm through my favorite songs while I wondered whether their presence signified a new direction for Coachella (towards an aesthetic I find much more attractive and interesting than that of, say, the stupid Killers) or simply reaffirmed my aforementioned belief that some music is best kept in dark places where sweat is produced via dancing hard as fuck rather than by standing in the fucking sun thinking, “I would be dancing right now if I weren’t sweating my balls off!”

And: I guess I do like that one TV on the Radio song; how gross but totally radical it is that M.I.A. can hop and squat and shimmy and slam like that so soon after popping a baby human out of her vagina? I mean, I hate it when people talk about their babies and how their babies are waiting for them so they can only sing seven songs but I’ll take seven songs and some dumb-ass baby banter if it means I also get amazing glow in the dark costumes and hammer-dancing in front of footage of impoverished Sri Lankan militia men while M.I.A performs effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat—unlike Gwen Stefani who looked like a sweaty bag of shit for several performances after birthing Kingston.

And: the Vivian Girls looking too shampooed to have all that hair in their face and doing absolutely nothing new but making me like them anyway—also a case of No One Dancing until my buddy Jack and I started a water-spitting war and got at least 12 too-skinny kids in short shorts to move, although they were mostly just scurrying away from us but really where’s the line between that and the way hipsters dance, anyway? Plus the Vivian Girls really know how to harmonize and they swapped instruments during a coda without any awkwardness at all, a well-choreographed gimmick that reminded me of how cool I felt the first time I switched drivers going 80 on the freeway but then also how I wondered immediately after, “Why did we just do that?” But then I thought immediately after that: “Sometimes it’s good to do something just for fun, even if it could kill you.” Not that the Vivian Girls switching instruments during a song could kill anyone—the analogy really lies in the doing something just for fun part, because you are young so maybe it’s enough that you are new even if what you’re doing is not.

Also—how No Age has really gotten their shit together. They are now a professional act complete with Scott their very own sound guy (ex-drummer for the Soft Boiled Eggies) and Jim Smith who coolly orchestrated the tech guys to get it all just right so that this show actually did get people bouncing up and down and shoving each other a bit. Plus Chloe Sevigny, one of my first female crushes, was there looking like a fancy rancher’s daughter wearing a white dress that was sort of see through if you stared at it long enough and with her golden locks in a tidy French twist. And: how I can’t help but hum along to that goddamned whistly song by Peter, Bjorn and John.

Finally: how watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you? But I guess that’s how culture propagates itself and blah-blah-blah babies are gross, even when they are not babies but musical movements.

I didn’t get to see Public Enemy because I was busy almost getting arrested. Then I was not allowed back in so I didn’t get to see the Cure either. Lame.

—Drew Denny

If you are going to be in Austin next week for SXSW, please come to the Spaceland party!!
Its on Wednesday March 18th from 11:30am to 6pm at Maggie Mae’s (323 E. 6th Street).

STAGE ONE:
11:30 – 12:00 Black Gold
12:20 – 12:50 The Boxing Lesson
1:10 – 1:40 Juliette Commagere
2:00 – 2:30 Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
2:50 – 3:20 Yelle
3:40 – 4:10 Cut Off Your Hands
4:30 – 5:00 The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
5:20 – 5:50 Other Lives

STAGE TWO:
11:45 – 12:15 Lovvers
12:35 – 1:05 The Mae Shi
1:25 – 1:55 Future of the Left
2:15 – 2:45 Marnie Stern
3:05 – 3:35 Vivian Girls
3:55 – 4:25 Mapei
4:45 – 5:15 Nico Vega
5:30 – 6:00 Wavves

STAGE THREE:
12:00 – 12:30 Local Natives
12:50 – 1:20 Gavin Castleton with Meiko
1:40 – 2:10 Bad Veins
2:30 – 3:00 We Were Promised Jet Packs
3:20 – 3:50 Harlem Shakes
4:10 – 4:40 Titus Andronicus
5:00 – 5:45 Garotas Suecas