“Life’s too short not to do the things you wanna do when you can do them,” says Katy Goodman. Goodman, bassist of the Vivian Girls, is telling me why and how the band reunited for the first time since their breakup in 2014 to record their new full length, Memory, in secret.
“We had been broken up for about five years and Katy just called me one day and was like, ‘Hey, do you want to do the band again?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! I’m gonna move to LA.’ And that was pretty much it. It was as easy as that. I was always down to play music with the Vivian Girls again, and I think they knew that,” Cassie Ramone, guitarist, elaborates. In this moment, the Vivian Girls bring to mind one of my favorite feminist art pieces by Mary Kelly: Seemed right… just made sense… like a lightning bolt!
And it was like a lightning bolt: Goodman and Ramone reunited with drummer Ali Koehler in a way that they all describe as “natural,” making it sound as if it were easier to get the band back together than to hold it back.
“It was so much fun. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I felt like Kylie Jenner or something,” says Ramone, reminiscing on the band’s decision to reunite and record their new album totally in secret — and keep that secret to themselves. Goodman chimes in, “Except Kylie Jenner didn’t reveal that she was pregnant until after she gave birth.” She continues explaining the rarity of a secret project in 2019: “Especially [now] where every move you make is on your Instagram Stories, everyone knows everything. So it was really cool to partake in something very secretive. ‘Cause it doesn’t really happen.”
If you close your eyes you can hear the best parts of the late aughts in the Vivian Girls’ Memory, their dissonant and distinct sound for fans of grunge greats and girl groups alike. Music that sounds like it’s made for bedroom dancing. Jangly guitars, chords and lyrics that connect to a vague yet poignant sense of melancholy. The songs we all danced and swayed to when our favorite DIY clubs were still open; when possibility still felt real in Williamsburg. Dreamily lo-fi. Yet Memory sounds bigger than any of their previous recordings. Somehow more deliberate.
Memory was recorded with producer Rob Barbarto, whom both Goodman and Ramone had recorded previously (with La Sera and The Babies, respectively). The collaboration, much like everything else about this specific moment in time for the Vivian Girls, feels natural. “I can’t even imagine recording this with anyone else really. It was meant to be. It felt meant to be,” says Goodman, “And it came out very big sounding. Our goal was to capture the energy of the first album, but the sonics of nothing we’ve ever done before. So I feel like this was the perfect marriage of those two things.”
It’s the Vivian Girls grown up. Ramone describes personal hardships and a sense of humility that permeate a new way of being for the band. There’s a slowing down. “I really like that we have this long lead time… instead of trying to hit the ground running while doing a million other things,” says Koehler. “Back when we were an active band, we were writing songs on tour, then on our week off from tour we’d record a new album; everything right on top of one another, no breaks,” adds Goodman. They describe this current iteration as “a lot less urgent.”
And that’s the beauty of a comeback: the Vivian Girls embodied much of what the New York scene was in 2007-2014. A group that started out playing DIY shows from the basements of New Brunswick, New Jersey to the punk houses of Brooklyn, and eventually toured the world, signing to Polyvinyl Records. Now, they return to each other and to what they’ve created together.
As the Vivian Girls head out on the road, they can’t wait to play live again. “I am very excited to play shows again,” says Goodman, definitively, “We’ve all played a lot of shows since Vivian Girls broke up, but there’s nothing quite like a Vivian Girls show for me. No other show can compare.”
Make sure to catch Vivian Girls on tour this Fall.
