the new album IS in the top 5 albums released this year...quite possibly in the top 3...amazing album!

I like their albums, the last one is really great. But they really sucked live.

so amazing

I dont know this band. And maybe I'll keep it this way just becuz.

Yeah, only listen if you like good melodies and songwriting. If you don't enjoy great music, there's no reason to check em out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008...0-vivian-girls

glasvegas?

whut?

what is it about punk/indie that makes something just a nostalgic rip off because of its influences or references points. others genres don't get this, they get praised for sounding like what has gone past. but punk/indie are filled with douchetards like this guy who think they have seen everything before once and that only "record collector types" are interested in new underground music because once you are in your 20's you have to start being an adult and reading the guardian music section without spitting on it in disgust or using it for toilet paper.

omg they won't appeal to duffy or amy fans? what?

I always confuse them with Parenthetical Girls.
Don't know about the hype thing but I think they're boring (Vivian Girls, well, Parenthetical Girls too)

They released a single like 6 months ago that was really good. Had keyboard in one part!

Still just an amazing pop band. Just great melodies. I love how loose and sloppy they are but melodically pleasing. Brilliant. Just great music.

They took a major blow a few months ago when their drummer left and joied Best Coast (who sound almost exactly like Vivian Girls, just a LOT cleaner, and more vocal-dominated; not bad stuff by any means though, just not as good as VG). They got a new drummer who is supposedly a lot better and they're working on some new stuff. whee!! Also, the guitar/singer Cassie has a new band too. Really excited.

Just a great band.

Boring shit.

I prefer Dum Dum Girls. Their Sub Pop album is pretty super.

I still haven't heard Dum Dum Girls. Now's as good a time as any.

I can only tolerate this kind of music when drunk at parties. Even then it usually gets on my nerves. That Jail La-La song by Dum Dum Girls is alright. I still haven't heard anything memorable by Vivian Girls.

the lyrics to jail la la puts me off the singer a bit.

it sounds awfully like she has gone to some show and is prancing about "EW THEY ARE ALL SO DIRTY AND POOR AND ON DRUGS DADDY BOYFRIEND COME AND SAVE ME FROM THIS BITCH WHO IS ENGAGING ME IN CONVERSATION I ONLY COME TO SHOWS TO ACT SILENT AND FEY AS IF I AM SO INDIE DEEP AND ALMOST COLD BUT LIKE, YOU KNOW, COOL."

again this is just me being wildly speculative and prejudiced and i am probably wrong but you know what, whatever. i don't think gg allin and rolling stone covers is the way to go in 2010. so i will just keep to my possibly massively unfair assumptions and bitchiness.

but jail la la is actually a really well recorded lo fi song, in fact its superb.

my problem is not so much with the music, its that we don't NEED any more childish nice lala indie twee music in 2010. we don't need another goddamn beat happening. everyone is a fucking teenager nowadays, noone is an adult, and there are very few adults making music. mainly rockstars or hipsters or metalfools or hedonic positivity supplement makers.

noone is making angry music in 2010 that is angry at anything other than their precious FEELINGS.

again, all my complaints can't be directed at this band since they are simply doing what they are doing. i am just frustrated that in 2010 we don't seem to have gotten very far since the 80's and bands like this are all the rage. if this band had come out on k in 1981 like they wish they had then yeah, they'd be there in the lists of great 80's indie.

it's just dissapointing to realise the idea of "progress" is an absolute myth. and to be constantly thinking "man if only i was younger or it was the 80's or early 90's this music would kick so much ass."

you know what the really sad thing is, there will prob be teenagers in 2025 who start idealising 00's indie like this. HA. i know. but i bet you you will get kids on youtube or whatever it is by then saying things like "omg music today is so shit i wish it was back to the 00's best era for music ever."

they will be hoking thru charity shops for stripey jumpers and tight jeans and cobain sunglasses. they will be like "OMG IF ONLY I WAS ALIVE BACK THEN I COULD HANG OUT WITH WAVVES AND LIEK EVERYONE WUD GET ME AND I'D JUST MERGE INTO THE HISTORY OF 00'S INDIE MEDIA AS IF SOME VORTEX OPENED UP TO CONVERT MY PHYSICAL BODY INTO THIS ROCKSTAR HERO WHO APPEARS IN PERFECTLY POISED 00'S INDIE BEAUTY IN ALL THOSE OLD BLOG PICTURE POSTS AND YOUTUBE VIDEOS!"

seriously, look on youtube and there are kids saying this about the 90's and 80's. and if i'm honest even i had a stupid idealised notion of what it must have been like to be growing up around 90's grunge.

you know what we need? a godddamn maoist purge. "DEATH TO THE OLD WAYS!" we need a bunch of redshirts scouring the internet hacking pfork into oblivion and deleting mp3 after mp3 of old unacceptable music. "WHAT IS THIS? NIRVANA? OFF TO THE LABOUR CAMPS WITH YOU, YOU SHALL TOIL IN THE FIELDS PROGRAMMING NEW AUDIO SOFTWARE FOR PEOPLES LAPTOPS!" We need shock troopers busting into peoples houses and re appropriating their hd's, deleting all the old shit and screaming at them: "ITS 20-FUCKING-10, WHY DON'T YOU SPEND I DON'T KNOW MORE THAN A FEW HOURS CHECKING OUT ALL THE NEW INNOVATIVE STUFF THAT HAS COME OUT IN THE PAST 2 YEARS AND TRY TO DO SOMETHING ORIGINAL INSTEAD OF TRYING TO PERFECTLY RECREATE A SIMULATION OF AN OLD 90'S BAND AND STYLE THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED, ONLY INSERTING YOURSELF INTO IT AS A GODDAMN COCOON TO HIDE FROM REALITY."

And just in closing. If there is one thing we have learnt from the internet era it is this: that the underground stays underground. Sure, unlike the past everyone with an internet connection can theoretically find good stuff, but its about as likely they'll come across it as it was that some kid like say ME in northern ireland would happen to come across that fanzine or stray issue of careless talks cost lives or especially rare CD.

For people to wade through the stultifying BS of mainstream music and find something cool is probably as hard as it always was. "democratising" my ass. look what happens to countries that get "democratised anyway", they got bombed to shit.

but whatever. i mean I certainly have no intention of turning 40 and looking back on these times as in anyway glorious or having any nostalgia for them at all.

i think its more about being a teenager and wanting to be someone else. being an adult is about actually doing something with the atrocious monster you have become. and i know a few adults who STILL wish they were someone else and keep taking drugs and making shitty music in order to try to become that person. and it's sad. really. really. sad.

and i don't think you get anywhere that way. whereas there are a lot of bands i could list right now that come 2025 EVERYONE will be pretending they were into and went to the shows of.

where people go wrong is that they try to create for themselves a pre existing style and image. they get so caught up in being someone else and trying to engineer a musical identity they get hopelessly stuck trying to recreate the past. i mean do you think the people who started all these goddamn skinny jeans and cheque shirt trends were actually self conciouss of what they were doing? of course not. you can't create some sort of pre existing mould for yourself based on selectively trimming things from a collage of other people you want to be.

can you imagine the last gen xer roaming around in 20 years time with his fat gut and too tight nirvana t shirt? EWW. going to some show trying to hit on the teenage girls in the vintage 00's wavves t shirt? EWWW. some idiot who has a mid life crisis and regrets going into insurance and wants to relive his youth and starts digging up ancient episodes of the daily show and asking his kids to buy him some weed and pays itunes $50 for the deluxe deluxe deluxe bonus edition of nevermind?

we should be trying to get as far away as possible from this bullshit "authenticity crisis" and "natural expression" crap of guitar rock and indie lo fi grunge whatever.

And today, ladies and gentlemen, Doug Mosurock rounds up the music that made him feel like he was walkin ' on sunshine in 2010.

wow, now it looks like genteel is ripping on nik with some obscure esoteric reference that makes him look like a fool. well, i guess i just don't get what he means.

You're banging on as though a handful of people on SYG somehow represent this massively influential demographic, when 99% of those who really do have some actual influence couldn't give a shit about reviving indie's supposed golden age. The Maoist purges you want to revive weren't designed to disrupt a small and pretty insignificant tea party. You're talking big politics but applying them to something that ultimately doesn't matter.

no, i really didn't mean or intend to imply it was just people from syg. i don't get why you say that, it can apply to any number of massively hyped musicians now. it's more of an attitude within music that i don't like.

and the maoist thing was more of a joke.

i don't know who these people that have "actual influence" are. and my point is that it wasn't a golden age. i don't see things as made up of people who have actual influence and those that don't. what i was trying to criticise is how people are happy to settle for these stale aesthetics and how indie now is like an industry of people trying to pretend the past few decades never happened and we should all still be trying to take a page from nirvanas book. its retro at its worst, and its regressive and boring an ultimately just the revitalisation of yesterdays dead end.

Who can be fucked to care though? Really, Vivan Girls are just shit. Not, y'know, shit in a good way. Just a bit shit. Not ground-breakingingly, art-stultifyingly shit. Just a bit shit. Some people appreciate their brand of shit. Good for them. Does it really matter? Does it matter if some other stuff that's also shit is a bit popular? Does it really matter that there's a lack of life-affirming shit? It'd still be shit. For me, it's all not Mahler, but it could equally, for someone else, not be some other sort of shit. If you're going to negate everything, you might as well affirm that negation. Or wallow in your own self-indulgent shit. Either way.

clap clap

I absolutely agree that indie now (as a kind of genre) is a stale, backward looking aesthetic. All I'm saying is that in the big scheme of what's going on musically it's of no importance. There's enough really interesting things going on outside that world for me to not care at all what the average Wavves fan thinks or listens to. I rarely post in the Non-Sonic Sounds section for that very reason. I like some individuals here but primarily for their interests outside of music.

What I mean is Nirvana obsessives or whatever are no different from Morris Dancers. They exist but, thankfully, the world moves on regardless. I have issues and opinions but those are aimed at things that I think really are having a negative impact. Seriously, start a band the way you think a band should be, write a book, do something, anything besides wasting your energy and ideas on people who, to my mind, really aren't worth worrying about.

Exactly my perception of her too.

Vivian Girls are a good band, certainly not the best, but there are much worse out there for sure. To single them out as the worst thing ever with such fervent hatred strikes me as reserving your anger for easy targets, when you could pick much more deserving ones. Or really, you could just shut up and do something productive with yourself. Not that many people out there can be identified as Vivian Girls fans, so you might be sitting right next to one while you type this on your laptop on a train, and they'd politely offer you their handkerchief because they spotted some blood coming out of your nose.
Vivian Girls fans are all around you, in the bank, at school, behind the meat counter at Tesco, waiting for the bus, doing your laundry, hell, even your parents might wait for you go out and then throw Vivian Girls on the turntable and shake a leg.

i really like them. they don't strike much of an emotional chord with me, but i like listening to their records, they sound cool.

^ yep...and I'm in love with Cassie.

Vivian girls are ok. Nothing to big, just nice girl kind of trashy lo-fi rock&roll like a million other bands. They might look great but their music is far from brilliant, entertaining it is.

This excellent band has a new album coming out this spring called SHARE THE JOY.

I love this band, I love how sloppy and off they usually are, but their great simple melodies hold it together. They just have a cool sound, not much beyond that, nothing groundbreaking, but at least it's not slick overproduced glossy stuff, there's an energy in their off key singing and out of tune guitar playing that appeals to me, as well as some genuinely good melodies and songwriting. I also enjoy how they're named after Darger! No, but really.. they just offer me simple joys, there may not be much depth to it, but it's certainly more interesting and listenable than most of the other blogcore bands. I think "Tell the World" is an exceptionally interesting and well-made song, also.

Here's a cool live 27 minute performance
http://www.amoeba.com/live-shows/vid...ian-girls.html

oh neat, the new album is produced by the guy who produced MENEGUAR's stuff, he's excellent.

photos from ATP
http://narlus.zenfolio.com/p743415705

!

thanks

http://www.sendspace.com/file/efry0o

great new cover of JOHN I'M ONLY DANCING (david bowie) by vivian girls

i quite like the bowie cover, i actually frequently enjoy bowie covers eventhough i find him offensively boring

Perfectly fine band I think. Them and Dum Dum Girls both. Though they're enough to have in terms of these kinds of bands. They don't pretend to be anything amazing, or claim to be. They just write really fun simple tunes. Like that one part in Vivian Girls' Second Date, that's just three notes, love it.

Though I do think both bands come up with some really exciting vocal melodies.

I just started listening to the second Vivian Girls album yesterday. At first I didn't think it was as good as the first one, but it's slowly creeping to par now I think. Can't wait for the new one.

Hey ni'k, what do you think of a band like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj7pDNDuoJ0

Obviously they were trying to be good and ended up being really awful. But imagine briefly that they were deliberately mutilating Pink Floyd. Good step toward shaking off and swearing off the past and moving on? Or just stupid maybe? I dunno, I think I'd be intrigued by a band that deliberately did really awful covers of famous tunes. The idea can't be too new, but I can't think of any obvious examples. I just enjoy the idea of destroyed versions of these really elevated to godhood tracks.

In my world, any band that "just wrote simplistic fun tunes and didn't pretend to be anything they aren't" wouldn't exist, or if they did it would only for the purpose of publicly displaying instruments to steal.

or maybe they would exist, but as the parts of a performance piece that involved feeding them into a blender. it would be called "like, it's just fun dude, don't take it so seriously. why r u so angar al the time? fuck sake dude chil out, SOMEBODY enjoys it and thats all that matters, why do you have to have such a problem with everything? do you even ENJOY music anyway?".

anyone that showed up to the performance and had ever uttered any variation of the words in the title would find the entire audience suddenly turning around and staring at them, their eyes gleaming like digitised red rubies, and they would start floating into the air until they were suspended over the massive blender. and they would be held there to build suspense, but once their screams got too loud they would be released and would fall into the whirling sluices were they would meet their quick demise.

once the performance was over the audience would leave through the portal in the doorway and find themselves waking up the next morning with only a dim and confused memory of some violent dream. it would be a thing never spoken of directly by the townfolk, perhaps alluded to in heavily coded and conspiratorial language in the darker corners of some bar once in a while. But all assembled would barely be conciously aware of what they were talking about, and if pressed or pestered by some stranger would fly into a defensive rage at such impolite noseying.

Over time, the amount of morons would be whittled down substantially, and when these self concious idiots were out of our way, the rest of us would set about our rituals and festivals of forbidden magick and sounde unperturbed.

And in regards to that pink floyd track. i dont care. you dont need to mutilate the past in order to move on. you just ignore it in the first place. theres no need to pay attention to such crap. i've never heard the original song in question and dont want to. i have unfortunately heard a pink floyd track but not because i wanted to. who is this person who deems this music elevated to godhood in the first place? he doesn't exist, why do we need to pay any attention to him. why do we need to care. we don't. i am only concerned with what i am listening to and others whose listenings interest me.

it's like some episode of family guy that pretends to be "parodying" all these cliches, when in fact it is just reproducing them over and over again. i don't care about that kind of behaviour.

I don't like this cover because I think it's played much too fast and as a result it loses what I like in the original (but maybe I'm biased because it's one of my Bowie favourites - I haven't heard Vivian Girls' music yet).

new album leaked, get on slsk if you want it, a million people have it. it actually sounds pretty different so far.

yeah new album has some of their absolute best material. Also some of their dullest. Real weird. I'd say it's their weakest album to date, with some of their best songs. New drummer is by far their best drummer so far. LOVE the keyboard on "LIGHT IN YOUR EYES" (which also has the absolute best -- and strangest -- guitar solo Vivian Girls have ever layed to tape); strange that a keyboard makes an appearance there as well as their last single "my love will follow me around", released last April... but those are the onlytwo keyboard appearances in any VG songs. I was for some reason expecting the new album to have a lot more keyboards.

All in all, this album shows a LOT of growth, not just because two songs are 6 minutes long (!); there is a new maturity and complexity, structurally and melodically to the new stuff. Still, the two best songs besides the last track are "Death" and "Lake House", two old songs... some of the newer stuff like "dance if you wanna" and "i heard you say" retread the same ground they already treaded before, reusing the exact same beats and similiar riffs, extending the length of the songs but actally being downright boring.

So, all in all, some of their best material ever, next to some of their worst. Probably would've been wiser to release an ep of their best stuff, I have a feeling their next album will be amazing though, since there is some real amazing stuff on here...

I pretty much agree with this 98%. They seemed to have embraced the '60s girl group stuff fully on this one. Some great songs, some that weren't fully baked.

their new album is kind of a dissappointment for me to be honest... amazebox in places and just forgettable in others...... go back to simply sounding like talulah gosh and everything will be ok.

sorry, i didnt mean to come over all muso :-)