Crystal Stilts & Mantles Mini Tour.

Crystal Stilts & Mantles West Coast mini tour starts this Wednesday!

7/25    San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall   
7/28    San Diego,CA @ The Casbah   
7/29    Los Angeles, CA @ Part Time Punks @ The Echo

Podcast #40 + #41 Doubleheader.

Revolver USA Podcast #41 with releases with a November 9th Street Date features: Hank IV, Parting Gifts, Tyvek, Saroos, Weekend, Woolfy, Phil Wilson, Dum Dum Girls, Fern Knight, Salome, Theologian, Ehnahre, Seti-X, Polar Bear with Jyager, and Justine and the Victorian Punks.  

Revolver USA Podcast #41 with releases with an October 26the Street Dates features: Octopus Project, Grayson Gilmour, Die Die Die, John Wesley Coleman, Tropics, Numan, Shit Robot, DJ Rashad, Wooden Wand, Purling Hiss, Excepter, Slough Feg, Crystal Stilts and Phil Wilson.

Download and streaming options for both Podcasts can be found at the usual destination:
REVOLVER POD PAGE.

Revolver USA Podcast #17 Is Ready For A Listen.

Whoa, what happened? It's been a long ass time since the last Revolver USA podcast. Cast #17 plays catch-up with the past couple months of releases: Susumu Yokota, Onna, Matteah Baim, Bob Log III, Syntheme, Pansy Division, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Crystal Stilts. You can stream or download an AAC file of this podcast and all other Revolver podcasts at the Revolver pod-page: http://www.midheaven.com/audio/podcast/

More to come soon.

iTunes NEW digital titles from Vivian Girls, Papercuts, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Papercuts' new CD/LP "You Can Have What You Want" (Gnomonsong) will ship on April 6th, but you can download it now exclusively on iTunes with a bonus digital-only track.

Vivian Girls' "Surf's Up" single is also now available digitally - only on iTunes through April 21st.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart's "Young Adult Friction" single is also now available on iTunes, as is Crystal Stilts' "Love Is a Wave" 7".

For a complete listing of Revolver USA exclusive titles available for download from the iTunes Music Service, emusic, and AmazonMP3, please visit our Downloadables page.

Vivians on MTV.com.

Vivian Girls' Phantom Punk Packs A Punch, By John Norris
'Wild Eyed' Jersey girls made good are among indie-dom's 2008 successes.
Original Post

What's the secret to the appeal of the Vivian Girls? How have they been able to break through in an ever more crowded punk-pop field, grabbing the attention of blog after blog, booking gig after gig? What accounted for their debut album becoming a certifiable collector's item, only a couple of months after its release?

"I would say it's that we're really, really good musicians," the Girls' Cassie Ramone said, adding, "we're like geniuses of sound." "Kind of like, you know, virtuosos?" Kickball Katy concurred. "We all went to music college."

Uh, they kid. They may not have a Juilliard or Berklee diploma among them, but the Vivian Girls — whose ranks are rounded out by drummer Ali Koehler — have certainly got a sound. If you haven't had the pleasure of hearing them yet, think '60s girl group the Shangri-Las (God knows enough critics have) meets the reverb-loving indie pop of the short-lived Black Tambourine — though the VGs themselves cite Nirvana and their punk forebears the Wipers as their top two essentials. Whatever the ingredients, the result is a band that's gotten a ton of attention in indie and college ranks — first with the spring release of the single, "Wild Eyes," and then with their self-titled debut album, initially released by indie imprint Mauled By Tigers with a pressing of only 500 copies. The limited number created — to put it mildly — a demand. "We were originally going to only make 300," Cassie explained. "We thought, 'There is no way 500 people are going to buy this.' " How wrong they were. Within two weeks, the album had sold out, and, Katy said, they could hardly believe it. "We were high-fiving and were like, 'How is this possible?' " Then came eBay. "Yeah, someone sold it unexpectedly on eBay for $100," Cassie recalled, "and then suddenly everyone was selling it."

All good news for L.A.-based label In the Red, which re-released the Vivian Girls' album last month, to the tune of another 4,000 copies sold since. Need any more indication that the Vivians are catching fire? Try the list of indie names they have shared the bill with in 2008: Jay Reatard, King Khan, TV on the Radio, F---ed Up (who happen to have a song called "Vivian Girls") and, most recently, Deerhunter, a band that also likes some reverb. Matter-of-fact, it seems to be everywhere you turn nowadays — I've lost count how many reverb-lovin' acts I have talked to this year alone — but the Vivian Girls have developed as much a signature sound as any of them. It's been called "spooky" and "ghostly," a feeling certainly enhanced by the scary-drive-in-movie-complete-with-cheesy-bats-and-zombies look of their video for "Tell The World."

That resounding reverb really happened by accident, when the girls were recording their first demo back in 2007. "It was our friend Craig from the band Hunchback — they recorded it, and he was like, 'Oh, let's put some reverb on these backing vocals.' And then we decided to put 'em on all the vocals." The girls swear by the Holy Grail — an effects pedal not meant for vocals — which makes for a lot of sweet echo-y sounds, but also for lots of feedback when they play live, which causes the occasional run-in with sound men. "This guy the other day was like, 'These little girls are feeding back too much,' " Katy recalled, "so the whole time he kept turning off our mics!" As Cassie, not to be trifled with, put it, "He was a di--. But you know what? Feedback is sweet and it annoys people and we like that."

That includes one fan at a recent show — apparently uninitiated to the Girls' love of feedback, reverb and vocals buried in the middle that are often indecipherable, he decided to weigh in. "Your sound guy sucks!" he yelled. "Oh really?" replied Katy. "I don't think so. He rules. I think it's maybe you that sucks." Enough said.

The Vivian Girls' path to this point was, in their own words, a "musically incestuous" one that began in 2002 and traversed New Jersey — from high school in Ridgewood, where Cassie fronted a lo-fi/novelty band called Upholstery; down to New Brunswick, where Katy and Ali formed the "surf/ riot grrl" band Four Way Milkshake, and later, a poppier duo, the Pot and the Kettle; to Brooklyn, where, as a student at Pratt Institute, Cassie joined the punk trio Bossy. "The best band in the world," Ali said. She moved to Germany for school just before Katy, Cassie and original drummer Frankie Rose formed the Vivian Girls, who made their live debut in May of 2007.

"Beef" is something you generally encounter in hip-hop circles, or metal, maybe, but not with fledgling indie pop-punk bands. Yet the VG's did have a slice of beef this summer, when Frankie — who came up with the band's name (after Henry Darger's hermaphroditic warrior princesses, of course) and appears in credits and photos on the album — abruptly left the band just as Vivians buzz was reaching a fever pitch. The girls firmly decline to talk about the split — "Can we just move on? Next question!" — but it apparently had to do with Frankie doing double-duty with the Vivians and another of Brooklyn's finest new bands, Crystal Stilts. In any case, as a replacement on drums, longtime friend Ali proved a quick study. "I pretty much knew all the drum parts," she said. "I had been listening to them for so long already, going back to their first demo."

If there was a turbulent patch, it is decidedly in the Vivian Girls' rear-view mirror, as they spend a huge amount of time on the road. They're already looking forward to the May 2009 release of their second full-length album, about half of which they estimate is already written. "We listen to Cassie's demos on an iPod in the car," Ali explained, "then make up harmonies and stuff." Or, if they have a day off, "We go to the music-equipment store in town and 'practice' there. Everyone gets really mad, but we don't care," Ali added. Before 2008 is out, the girls will play a UK tour, and, to wind up this most momentous of years, a New Year's Eve show in Jersey with Yo La Tengo and the Feelies. Now that's a Garden State triple bill.

The Vivian Girls' debut album is out now.



Upcoming shows:
11/28 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's (w/ King Khan & BBQ Show)
11/30 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (w/ King Khan & BBQ Show)
12/02 London, UK @ Brixton Windmill
12/03 London, UK @ Old Blue Last
12/04 Nottingham, UK @ The Social
12/05 Liverpool, UK @ Club Evol
12/06 Glasgow, UK @ Captain's Rest
12/07 Leeds, UK @ Cockpit
12/08 Coventry, UK @ Colosseum
12/09 London, UK @ Madame Jojo's - White Heat
12/10 Manchester, UK @ The Deaf Institute
12/12 London, UK @ Vice Kills Proud Galleries
12/13 Bristol, UK @ Club Kute at Cooler

A Whopper 8.5 Vivian Girls Review On Pitchfork Today.

Vivian Girls: Vivian Girls
[In the Red; 2008]
Rating: 8.5

In a year when Brooklyn buzz travels around the world at lightspeed, you can probably count on one hand the number of new bands that, when the hype settles, are more than inconsequential collections of postures and exhausted second-hand styles. Vivian Girls, an all-female trio who've become overnight sensations among critics and underground rock fans, are seemingly candidates for one of those emperor's new clothes-type reveals-- after all, they hail from said borough and perform lo-fi garage rock that taps a number of fashionable historical, ideological, and aesthetic wellsprings (C86! Slumberland! Olympia! Nuggets! Spector!). They deflect the knee-jerk criticism the most effective way possible, though: with an armful of kick-ass songs.

Vivian Girls' 22-minute debut for the California-based garage-rock imprint In the Red is actually a reissue of this spring's 500-copy run on the tiny Mauled by Tigers label. The original release sold out in 10 days, amping both the band's mystique and the record's exchange value: A vinyl copy ended bidding at $68 on eBay a couple weeks ago. So far, Vivian Girls seem to be taking their subcultural celebrity-- not to mention the summer departure of drummer and band founder Frankie Rose for brother band Crystal Stilts-- in stride. In the intentionally dorky video for "Tell the World", Cassie Ramone, Kickball Katy, and Ali Koehler address the camera, poised and unsmiling, even as they pantomime the usual humiliating music vid motions.

The band's lyrics are just as purposefully passive. In his intro to Rhino's superlative box set, One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found, critic Gene Sculatti locates the enduring popularity of 60s girl group music in its effect: "This music was, like a moving symphony or free-floating jazz jam, mainly about a feel, a sound. It had words, yes, but they were never intended to get in the way of the overall impact of the record." Punk credentials aside, Vivian Girls are clearly simpatico to that gentler era's agenda. According to the band, the album is somewhat conceptual, its 10 tracks evenly split between love and heartbreak. "No", an angry thrash-and-bash propelled by a single lyric (guess!) is easy to place. But the LP is rarely so transparent, and Vivian Girls mainly get their message across with a murky wall of noise. Try to pry the lyrics of cacophonous openers "All the Time" and “Such a Joke" from their shoegazery feedback, thudding bass, and tambourine rattle and you'll be missing the point.

Without risking pastiche, the band gets plenty of mileage from its sonic references. "Tell the World"s frantic beat recalls the jittery, chaotic rhythm of Black Tambourine's "Throw Aggi Off the Bridge", while the Girls' flawless, calmly executed three-part harmony counters with the satin-shoed professionalism of the Crystals. The lyrics-- this is one of Vivian Girls' few completely legible songs-- are as ambivalent: "I'll tell the world about the love that I've found," they enthuse, giving public voice to teenage infatuation (an evergreen girl-group subject), while at the same time raising the Spector of out-of-whack control issues: "He sees what I see/ He feels what I feel." (Not convinced? Switch out the gender of the pronoun and singers.) The end result is phenomenal, one of 2008's best songs. The sweet jangled "Where Do You Run To" is almost as great, making pining at home seem not so bad, all things considered.

The trio nabbed its name from the heroines of outsider artist Henry Darger's magnum opus, In the Realms of the Unreal. A sorority of vaguely fetishized hermaphrodite messiahs, Darger's Vivian girls are some of the most slippery, troublesome figures in contemporary art, making the band's appropriation a clever bit of self-mythologizing. The final track on their album, "I Believe in Nothing", purportedly endorses nihilism. But it puts the lie to its own message with heavenly madrigals and a hooky refrain that'll burrow into your brain and replay like a mantra until you do, in fact, believe in something. Even if it's just this really awesome new band.

Lots of live dates:

10/3 New York, NY @ Rocks Off Concert Cruise
10/4 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY @ Bard College
10/5 Montreal, QC @ Les Divan Orange (Pop Montreal)
10/11 Queens NY Silent Barn record release show
10/12 Boston, MA @ Great Scott (w/ Fucked Up)
10/13 Danbury, CT @ Heirloom Arts Theatre (w/ Fucked Up)
10/15 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (w/ Fucked Up)
10/16 Brooklyn, NY @ Harket Motel (w/ Fucked Up)
10/17 Baltimore, MD @ Sonar (w/ Fucked Up)
10/18 Philadelphia, PA @ The Barbary (w/ Fucked Up)
10/19 Washington, DC @ Rock And Roll Hotel (w/ Fucked Up)
10/26 New York, NY @ Santos' Party House (w/ Jay Reatard)
11/8 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (w/ Deerhunter, Times New Viking)
11/9 New Haven, CT @ Bar
11/10 Boston, MA @ Paradise (w/ Deerhunter, Times New Viking)
11/16 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echoplex (Part Time Punks Festival)
11/17 San Diego, CA @ Casbah (w/ Love is All)
11/18 Los Angeles, CA @ The Smell (w/ Love is All)
11/20 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill (w/ Love is All)
11/22 Portland, OR @ Backspace (w/ Love is All)
11/23 Seattle, WA @ Nectar Lounge (w/ Love is All)
11/28 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's (w/ King Khan & BBQ Show)
11/30 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom (w/ King Khan & BBQ Show)
12/02 London, UK @ Brixton Windmill
12/03 London, UK @ Old Blue Last
12/04 Nottingham, UK @ The Social
12/05 Liverpool, UK @ Club Evol
12/06 Glasgow, UK @ Captain's Rest
12/07 Leeds, UK @ Cockpit
12/08 Coventry, UK @ Colosseum
12/09 London, UK @ Madame Jojo's - White Heat
12/10 Manchester, UK @ The Deaf Institute
12/12 London, UK @ Vice Kills Proud Galleries
12/13 Bristol, UK @ Club Kute at Cooler