Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
‘Not Quite Everything’
Often, a lot does go wrong with the notoriously difficult second album. Wild Beasts bucked the trend this year by improving on their own theatrical template, The Horrors similarly dug even deeper into pastiche to produce spectacular results. NYC’s Vivian Girls have done neither of these things and have seemingly instead released the second half of their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, 21-minute debut.
There is little wrong with the if-it-ain’t-broke approach, particularly when your echo-y harmonies and hazy, reverb-filled garage-noise are so in vogue. This said, it would be equally fair to say that if Vivian Girls’ three chords, surf-rock riffs and fuzzy, girl-group homage to C86 didn’t grab you on the eponymous debut, they are unlikely to do so now. As an aside, Raveonettes fans disillusioned at the band’s shiny evolution away from ‘Attack of the Ghost Riders’ may find a welcome home here.
Everything Goes Wrong sadly does not house a knockout tune akin to ‘Where Do You Run?’ in its jangly 36 minutes, and true, it is guilty of being ‘samey’, as naysayers are quick to point out. However, this marginally better-produced outing deserves to sit alongside Manhattan Love Suicides and Crystal Stilts as a worthy moment of lo-fi nostalgia.