Vivian Girls - Tell the World (2008)
Artist: Vivian Girls
Author: Sarah
Date: 12/27/2025
Listen: Just on vinyl, as far as I can tell!
If you listen to enough music from the 60s, you hear about it all the time: a band has a surprise hit, and unscrupulous record companies rush to capitalize on it with substandard releases. You don't hear about that quite so often with indie rock, but that's exactly how this single comes off. Released just a month after the first limited pressing of their debut album sold out in ten days and recorded a couple months before said album, this is Vivian Girls as you've never heard them before: just plain awful.
Frankie sounds fine, and Katy sounds fine, and if the band's vocals aren't quite up to the standards of their debut, they're at least working towards that point. If that were all, this would be worthy of your time as a glorified demo tape, but unfortunately, it's ruined by Cassie sounding like it's her first time picking up a guitar. The solos are all hesitant and sound like she's guessing at the notes, and overall she just sounds kind of out of time with the other two? There's a massive amount of improvement in the two months between the recording of this single and the recording of the band's debut, but I just can't recommend seeking this out to hear it.