Tag: vivian girls

TRACK | The Babies – Wild 2

5/5 golden merles

The Babies were a NY lo-fi rock super group of sorts (Kevin Morby/Woods, Cassie Ramone/Vivian Girls) and the two albums they released did not disappoint (2011 s/t and Our House on the Hill 2012). Solidly forged garage/pop rock focused on love, death, more death, and adventuring. There’s a real joyfulness to the morbidity married to it melody.

This morguementum carries on convincingly throughout on both the wild & mild sides. There’s seemingly a mutual respect in the making between members, every track features a couple compelling hooks, overflowing with enduring licks and brokered compartmentalization. Wild 2 is my favorite for the moment but it could be any featured on the first disc.

This should’ve been borderline infinitely earlier in the series (post a day for the first year [day 284], then whenever), it’s one of my favorite records without qualification. At least part of the delay was that I was hoping it might show back up on bandcamp. But no such luck so linking to some random yt video is the best we can do. It can still be acquired in the physical world, and should be.

TRACK | All Saints Day – It’ll Come Around

5/5 golden merles

“It’ll Come Around” is soaring but densely knotted dream pop, shimmering and shoegazing with an acoustic rumbling as the engine beneath. The lead vocals are provided by Vivian Girls/La Sera’s Katy Goodman, who has always been juxtaposing DIY aesthetic and the acutely anthemic. It’s well calibrated and the great resonance is in the balance of its dissonance.

The intention is direct effectiveness not the comforting simulacra of it. The snare drum snaps drifting centrally above the nested snarl. The synths claw a path forward. As one who feels like writing is at least partially the evasion of your own boredom of repetition, I am somewhat resentful of the resilience to remain within that loop and alter only slightly, coming up for breath in the bridge or verse variance amidst so much crushing chorus — and yet still have it work forcefully.

There are black and red versions of the single (along with similarly great “Only Time Will Tell”).

TRACK | Vivian Girls – I Heard You Say

5/5 golden merles

It is mercifully easy to be absorbed in the cascading vocal harmonies of “I Heard You Say.” Its many graceful hooks effectively converge with a sense of punk dread and foreboding. And there is some real force of these coalescing influences.

The instrumentation is quietly elaborate for the garage rock genre, sneaking, rattling and smashing in support. There is much smoldering grit to the production. Everything collapsing through the phases into its right place, nothing extraneous just perfectly balanced.

Between Vivian Girls/The Babies, Cassie Ramone is one of my favorite songwriters. 250 days into this project, it is difficult to believe that I haven’t yet featured either and this is the remedy to that. It’s an oversight.