There’s no doubt that Vivian Girls was one of the most important musical groups to shape my life, and one of the reasons why this website exists. They seemed to appear on that magical verge where your idols had once been older than you but suddenly here was a band formed by people about the same age as me, who had grown up with the same influences and making the music of my dreams. It was intense period from 2008 to 2011 when virtually everything was about them and their subsequent projects The Babies, La Sera and Frankie Rose solo.
Cassie Ramone, despite being the perhaps the most crucial member, never really hit home on her solo recordings the same way she did with Vivian Girls or The Babies. But in 2024, ten years after her most recent record, she has finally created an album that sounds exactly like my life, if it were a record. Sweetheart has just come out on CD-R Records, fitting considering the cd-r copies I used to hand out of the Vivian Girls demo.
It’s also available on VHS, since the album is accompanied by a full-length video of homemade clips filmed by Cassie on her way between New York and Richmond, where the album was recorded. It’s kind of heartbreaking to read the letter to the listeners on her website – where she mentions her battle against alcohol addiction and job stints at warehouses and food deliveries. It’s hard to imagine that such an iconic musical hero has had to fight so hard to survive. But it frames the 11 tracks on the LP as one of the last outsider art pop albums.
