Cannibal Cheerleader

Planet of Girls

INTERVIEW WITH VIVIAN GIRLS
Recently here at Cannibal Cheerleader we had the opportunity to conduct an interview with one of our favorite new bands of the year Vivian Girls. Having not only created a firestorm of press with their sold-out debut and girl-group meets shoegaze sound, the Girls’ star seems to be shining brighter and shooting farther with each passing day as they plan on opening for Sonic Youth this weekend in New York. We caught up with the trio via email and here’s what they had to say:

CC: Describe to us the Vivian Girls story. How did you come together as a group and what spurred you on to create this type of music?

Cassie: Vivian Girls began when me and Frankie (our old drummer) were eating brunch at a Mexican restaurant and decided to start a band. We had a few practices and still needed a bass player, so I asked Katy (one of my best friends from high school) if she wanted to join. Our original goal was to be a fast yet melodic punk band. At one of our early shows someone said we sounded like Black Tambourine – so we checked ‘em out and thought they were sweet. That’s when we added the reverb.

More of the interview printed at the end of this post. Give a listen to a song off the Vivian Girls’ self-titled debut below.

Vivian Girls – “Where Do You Run To”
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VIVIAN GIRLS VIDEOS
We’ve only recently come up the Vivian Girls’ blog but it’s the number one source for VG news and videos. Speaking of which, here are two fantastic videos from the blog, reposted here for your viewing pleasure. Check it!

Vivian Girls – “Damaged”

Vivian Girls – Full Set at Death By Audio

vivian girls live at death by audio (brooklyn) from acid marshmallow on Vimeo.

Rad stuff girls!
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RINGO DEATHSTARR REVEAL NEW TUNES
One of our favorite local acts Ringo Deathstarr have recently stuck two new tunes (”In Love” and “Summer Time”) up on their Myspace and if they’re any indication of the upcoming material that the shoegazing quartet has in store for us, than this might just be the Austin band of the millennium. Seriously, the riffs on “In Love” are phenomenal and the dream-like quality of “Summer Time” reminds of a fuzz-filled musical heyday. Definitely go over and check them out. They play this Saturday at Emo’s, so don’t miss it!

Ringo Deathstarr – “Down On You”
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VIVIAN GIRLS INTERVIEW CONT’D
Here’s the rest of our interview with NYC’s Vivian Girls. Enjoy!

CC: How would you describe your sound? Lots of terms are thrown around, from ‘ramshackle punk’ to ’shoegaze’, from ‘lo-fi’ to ‘girl-group’ and everything in-between. Do people have a hard time pinning you down? How would you categorize your music?

Cassie: I think of our music as a big mashup of everything we’re into – which includes every genre you mentioned above. It seems like people can apply our music to whatever kinda stuff they’re into, cause we’ve been called everything from “street rock” to “singalong twee” (barf) to “short songs that tread into psych and drone.” We’ve also been compared to every band with a female singer ever. On our Myspace we list ourselves as Punk / Shoegaze / Surf and that’s how I’d like to describe our sound.

Cassie: Our songs are usually written in one of two ways. Either I’ll write a song by myself and then the rest of a band will fill it out, or someone else writes a bassline and then we all work together on making it a song.

Cassie: It’s definitely a little bit of both. We try to pay a lot of attention to the levels of our reverb and amps and stuff, but none of us are pro musicians. Our live show is sometimes really chaotic because reverb and PA’s don’t get along, but whatever, we always have fun! Katy: We are still working on our live sound. Due to the reverb, sometimes the vocals are too soft.

Katy: I think our success was pretty random. I can’t attribute it to any one thing that we did. We are just really into what we’re doing, and I think other people can pick up on that. Cassie: I think it’s mostly just being at the right place at the right time kinda thing. We never really wanted all this attention but we’re stoked. I don’t think my life has ever been any better. Whenever we read a positive review of ourselves we high five and then go sit in the park and watch dogs. It rules.

Cassie: Our favorite current bands are Yellow Fever, Cause Co-Motion, Titus Andronicus, Woods, and Abe Vigoda, to name a few. Our biggest influences are definitely Burt Bacharach and the Wipers and Nirvana and like every good pop song from the 60’s and 70’s. ELO’s “Turn to Stone” and Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” are two songs I’ve been listening to a lot lately. “Tell The World” and “Never See Me Again” are probably my favorite Vivian Girls songs. Katy: I also love all of those bands. My current favorite songs are “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers and “Make it easy on yourself” by Burt Bacharach. My favorite VG songs are “Surfin’ Away” and “Going Insane”. We only wrote “Surfin’ Away” a month ago.

Cassie: Riot grrrl, I think was a really important movement at the time and something that needed to happen. At the time the scene was a lot more aggro and male dominated. But from my personal experience of being in an all-female band today, we’ve actually found it surprisingly easy. Even though most of the bands we play with are mostly guys, we’ve encountered little to no sexism at our shows and dealing with people. The only instances in which people like to hate on the fact that we’re women is on certain blogs and message boards, but whatever, we don’t care. That’s why we have an appreciation for the original riot grrrl movement but new riot grrrl bands starting today just seem kinda dated.

Cassie: I have no idea if we’ve made it or not. I guess by now I’ve achieved a lot of my dreams, which were pretty small to begin with: just stuff like going on tour and putting out a record and having people be into a band I’m in. Things like having our record go on eBay for $100 and openning for Sonic Youth are just cool bonuses. So yeah, I guess I feel like we’ve “made it” but there are a lot of people who view “making it” as having a million dollars and a tour bus and the best gear. I also think that the “fame” we have is a really crazy combination of hard work and luck. Like me and Katy both almost failed our last semester of college cause we were so busy doing Vivian Girls stuff all the time. And we’re really lucky to have so many awesome friends who wanted to put out our records and book sweet shows for us. Katy: “Making it” is definitely a relative term. In my eyes, “making it” as a band is having the ability to do things you want to do. For example, we are starting up a project of recording and releasing our own 7″. This is something that I’ve always wanted to do, and I feel like because there are a number of people out there who are interested in our music, we can finally go ahead and do it without losing tons of money.

Cassie: Best part about touring, is obviously getting to go everywhere – but not only do you get to travel, you also have automatic friends in every city who know where all the cool stuff is, and you’re at a fun show every night. We are like touring machines. We love it. My least favorite part is sometimes you end up staying at houses with less than desirable sleeping situations, like houses with fleas or houses with only one couch and everyone else has to sleep on a hardwood floor. Katy: I really like that point on tour when you don’t know what day of the week it is anymore, because every night is saturday night.

Cassie: Our fanbase is made up primarily of record collectors and hot dudes. Seriously, it rules. It’s hard to say about the crowds at shows because we play so many different kinds of shows. Generally, the shows are the same as always, our friends are always there and it’s awesome. When we open for Sonic Youth we’re just gonna try to slay on our axes as hard as possible. Ya know? Katy: We just played a show this past week, and I noticed that the crowd there was more diverse than usual. It wasn’t just the one group of friends that we are used to, it was a lot of people who didn’t seem to know each other very well. I like bringing people together who might have never met otherwise. Also, I refuse to sleep until I know of at least one couple who met at one of our shows.

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