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Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls (2008)

Artist: Vivian Girls

Author: Sarah

Date: 2/7/2025

Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify

The chief virtue of this album is that they're play so fast that everything blends into a formless blur. The effect is a lot like what shoegaze tries to achieve, but more effective because it doesn't call attention to what it's doing. So while shoegaze inadvertently causes you to focus in on what they're doing, and become more sensitive to their flaws, this album speeds by so fast that you could listen to it multiple times in a row before you start to pick out any features.

Naturally, it's probably a love it or hate it thing. Some people don't want their albums to fly past without leaving any traces, but I like it. Usually, any album, no matter how good (or how short), feels too weighty for me to listen to it multiple times in a row, but with this one, because I miss nearly everything on any given listen, I immediately want to go back for more. Eventually, I just accept the blur, let myself get subsumed into it. And then it's time to hit play again.