“Enter Into Dis Gates With Thanksgiving” is inscribed ornamentally onto a support beam above the stage at the Church on York. The crowd certainly adhered to those words when the Vivian Girls performed one of their final shows at the Church on York, before they break up for good, after two shows in NYC.
Brooklyn's Vivian Girls had been around since 2007 and comprised of Cassie Ramone (guitar, vocals), Katy Goodman (bass), and [for most of their tenure] Ali Koehler (drums). The trio, inspired by the NYC Noise Pop tradition that has roots in the Velvet Underground, brought a fuzzy, wonderfully punk/feminist sound to the concert that was billed by all female-lead performing bands (The Aquadolls, Colleen Green, DJ Allison Wolfe) in the converted Church of Christ.
Playing a mix of material off of their three albums, Vivian Girls brought a torrential energy that gave the show an intimate, punk atmosphere, where people could stand on stage and jump back into the audience for a crowd serf. “Walking Alone at Night,” “I Heard You Say,” and “I Believe In Nothing” were highlights for me in their forty-five minute set that could have been longer, my only grievance post-concert.
What the Vivian Girls lack in technical proficiency as musicians (a gripe I heard from some friends before I went to the show), they certainly make up for with their intensity and audience engagement. When Cassie went to the floor during some extended outros, when Ali beat the cymbals destructively with a hell-raising crescendo, when Katy leaned back against the audience who held her up like family, you could tell the Vivian Girls feed off the crowd's excitement. The audience pressed forward towards the stage with kinetic energy as the curtain opened and kept those burners turned to the maximum until the house lights turned off.
Sometimes I worry about what kind of legacy the myriad of indie bands in the past fifteen years will have in the future. Even if the story of the Vivian Girls is only known and revered by select circles of punk rats and feminist audiophiles in the future, it should be known that the Vivian Girls meant a lot to everyone in that church on Friday. That should count for something.
-Eric Wiig
