---

BY ANNA ZALOKOSTAS and DAISY SCHMITT

In print | September 18, 2008

­Within the past few months, Brooklyn-based garage-punk band Vivian Girls has sold out the entire first pressing of their self-titled debut LP, signed to In the Red and opened for Sonic Youth­­. I got a chance to catch up with Cassie, Katy and Ali before they opened up for O’Death at Olde Club last Friday; here’s what they had to say.

Anna Zalokostas interviews Vivian Girls
Anna Zalokostas: So, how’s In the Red?
Cassie: In the Red is awesome! Larry’s the best dude, he’s like a surfer — sort of.­
Katy: He sounds like a surfer on the phone, I talked to him last night.
Cassie: This band went to his house at noon one day and they said he was wearing a robe and drinking a martini and smoking a cigar. No, wait, he wasn’t wearing a robe, he was wearing sunglasses — inside of his house, at noon, drinking a martini.

AZ: He sounds very cool. Could you guys talk a little bit about the process of writing the record?
Cassie: We wrote it continuously over the first eight months we were a band. We wrote a few songs a month, more or less and the LP was basically just a compilation of every song we wrote because we just had no other songs.

AZ: Well, the songs work really well together. I mean, I at least feel like they make up a pretty cohesive whole.
Cassie: Well, thanks. The way that we organized the LP was that we kind of made the first side songs about being in love and stuff and the second side were songs about being depressed.

AZ: What have you guys been listening to lately?
Katy: Cassie and her boyfriend got me Shangri-La’s record for my birthday the other day.
Ali: I just downloaded the MP3s from the Times New Viking record on my iPod.
Cassie: I’ve been listening to a lot of Nirvana and Kate Bush and Hall and Oats.

AZ: I listened to so much Nirvana over the summer.
Cassie: We listen to “Nevermind” on tour everyday.
Ali: I wrote a love song about Kurt Cobain the other day. It rules. About how we would be totally in love if he weren’t dead.
Cassie: Dude, I know, I think about that so much.

AZ: So how was playing the last pool party ever?
Katy: Amazing!
Cassie: The best ever. After the show we were all hanging out backstage and Lee Ranaldo came up to me and he was like, “Your band is really good” and I was like, “Your band is really good” and then I gave him my business card. And then this photographer walked by, and Lee Ranaldo was like, “Hey, take my picture with Cassie.” And I felt so cool.
Ali: It was one of the best shows of my life.
Cassie: Thurston Moore called me over and was like, “Hey Cassie, tell me about your tattoos!”
Anna: Oh yeah, let’s talk about tattoos!
Katy: Well, Cassie and I have a milkshake and a burger for New Jersey diners.
Ali: And I have coffee cups for New Jersey diners.

AZ: I love New Jersey diners, I worked at New Jersey diner over the summer.
Cassie: I was a waitress at a New Jersey Diner for like, one night, and it was really boring.

AZ: Yeah, no one really comes in at night, there are just long extended periods of like, glancing at the door hoping someone will walk in. So, what are you guys doing next?
Cassie: We recorded a seven inch and we’re going to limit it to 1,000 and we’re going to send out packages with like, a seven inch, a t-shirt, two postcards and a button. We’re going to silkscreen everything ourselves. So we’re going to probably release that around December on the Internet; it’s going to be cool!

Olde Club features O’Death in concert
This past weekend, Olde Club came alive with the jangling of banjos, the pounding of bass, the clashing of drums and the wailing of a very bearded man, compliments of O’Death, the headliner of the first Olde Club show of the Fall 2008 semester. The show was absolutely raucous, which came as a direct result of O’Death’s unique, rousing style of music. It is very likely that you’ve never heard anything like them before: their music is a hodge-podge of old-timey country, fierce punk and dreamy folk.

“The show was better than my boldest expectations,” said Olde Club Booking Director Charlie Decker ’09. “Olde Club was jam packed, people were actually dancing and crowd surfing and the band broke half their shit. An unqualified success any way you slice it.” O’Death echoed Decker’s full-fledged satisfaction: “I’m glad this show was the first one for Charlie … I feel like he feels good about it,” fiddle-player Bob Pycior said. “We play a lot of college gigs and they usually suck,” vocalist Greg Jamie said. “College shows tend to be very dry and unenergetic, but this show was great."

As intimidating and morose as their name may sound, O’Death is actually a tremendously kind and interesting group of guys out to make meaningful music. “I think that young people are afraid to listen to us,” Jamie said, “because it sounds like we’re a bunch of old dudes doing boring things, but we’re not really. We’re a bunch of old dudes, but we’re not boring.” So where did the angry-sounding name come from? “The name has been used mostly in songs … it’s public domain,” Pycior explained. “It’s been used in blues songs, it’s been used in old country songs, old gospel, literature — it’s just kind of the idea of personalizing death.”

So this is a band of often shirtless and primarily bearded “old dudes,” a band that makes music that completely transcends genre. One might wonder who their influences are and equally, what is playing on their iPods. The list is as varied and eclectic as O’Death’s instrumental line-up: Hall & Oats, electronica band Stardust, “certain David Bowie” (i.e., Ziggy Stardust), Motown, the album “Dirt” by Alice in Chains, Os Mutantes, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, The Eisley Brothers and the Pixies. When it comes to performing their own music, Pycior and Jamie said that newer songs are the most exciting to play but that “Fire On Peshtigo” from their “Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin” EP is one of their favorites to perform live. “Every time we play it I’m like, this is a great song!” Jamie said.

Even if you missed the concert, listening to O’Death could be a worthwhile endeavor, especially for those disenchanted with the current indie music scene — their sound is both haunting and familiar and will pull you right in, so don’t be afraid to check out their latest album, “Lowtide,” in stores October 28 and see for yourself exactly what “Appalachian-folk-rock-gypsy-punk” sounds like.

---

« RETURN TO LIVING & ARTS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »