Everett True vs Vivian Girls

I'm listening to a stream of the new Vivian Girls album Everything Goes Wrong on headphones.

Several immediate thoughts strike me.

1) It's so 'bright', so distorted, it makes Times New Viking sound like Placebo. Fuzz disintegrates into fuzz, drums topple into drums, harmonies are blissful because they're so everywhere. The one-note guitar solos ('Can't Get Over You') are kissable. It's hard to know where bad electronic transfers of music leave off and studio technique takes over. This is not twee, even remotely. This is punk rock, as traditionally defined. Indeed, this is the anti-twee. Trust me. You'd have to go deep within the black metal genre nowadays to find noise as extreme as this: the melodies will follow later, the same way they did with that debut Ramones album.

2) If ever a band were designed NOT to be listened to on headphones, it's Vivian Girls. Their entire existence calls out for distance. We're not talking subliminal messages here. We're talking music that DEMANDS to be blared out the car stereo, the Dansette record-player, the cheap borrowed CD-player with the volume switched to 30. It's rare these days that I miss standing sweating dancing moving cheering in front of cramped stages but I most certainly do with these ladies. I want to taste that sweat pouring off my eyelids! I want my ears to be ringing five days after. THIS IS MY MUSIC, you understand, THIS IS MY MUSIC!

3) It's rare a band's budget for recording is demonstrably reduced from first to second album. Even rarer that the second album benefits from such thriftiness. Even David Keegan might have been shocked at the rawness going down here. This observation (and it's probably wrong) is in no way meant to be an insult, just a delighted appraisal of the quality of the sound. While I'm here, 'The End' (an epic, on my terms) is the one that is fast snuggling up to that happy banner called 'single' because - well, because it understands The Fall's basic mantra of the three 'r's - repetition, repetition and repetition. And 'Out For The Sun' is out-and-out white noise, the like of which even Monte Cazazza could appreciate, I'm sure.

4) I cannot believe I once compared this band to Slumber Party. Oh wait, I wrote that before 'Before I Start To Cry' started up, right at the closing of the album, and tears started prickling at my eyelids...

5) There is still the outside possibility that this is precisely what 1985 sounded like - in my ears - and that Vivian Girls are merely incredible archivists. I somehow doubt this. I somehow really doubt this.

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