Girls Power

Comments (0) By Brian Bardwell Thursday, Oct 8 2009

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After a meteoric rise that brought them perilously close to the line that separates buzz from hype, Vivian Girls have followed up their self-titled debut album with another that seems to wisely dial things back just a little. That isn’t to say that Everything Goes Wrong is subdued or watered down, just that a first impression may not yield any immediate standout tracks. Where the first album was punctuated with showstoppers like “Wild Eyes,” “Where Do You Run To,” and the painfully over-analyzed “I Believe in Nothing,” this one is best given a few spins and time to grow on you. The distortion still sounds like No Age, the vocals still sound like Courtney Love harmonizing with herself, and the pace is still as frenetic, but the Girls have given themselves more room to breathe, finally letting most of their tracks develop past the two-minute mark and fleshing out both their sound and the album’s thematic elements, which are largely unchanged: boys, boys they aren’t with anymore, and thinking about boys they aren’t with anymore.
Tue., Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m., 2009