NOVEMBER 23 / 8:00PM
21+ / $10 Advance

get tickets

Nectar Presents:

Love is All

Vivian Girls

• Nodzzz

LOVE IS ALL

From seemingly out of nowhere, Love is All seem to be everywhere – the cover of magazines, darlings of the internet and on the lips of every die-hard music fan in America. The result of a well-manicured press assault? One would think that was the culprit, but, in actuality, the luck that has struck this Gothenburg five-piece – Josephine (vocals, keyboards), Nicholaus (guitar), Markus (drums), Johan (bass) and Fredrik (sax) – has been absolutely dumb, making both no sense at all and the most sense in the world. Where to start….. Josephine, Nicholaus, and Markus spent a long time in indie pop band Girlfrendo. The release of their first LP, Surprise Surprise, led to a small lot of fans, tours of America, Japan, Sweden (home sweet home!) and the UK. Their first American tour was organized by NYU student Kevin Pedersen to accompany another small UK group called Comet Gain. And BOOM! The quietest explosion ever…but that will be explained later. The second Girlfrendo LP was released, and their small lot of fans got even smaller (probably the work of the DC sniper). And their poor fate was sealed when Girlfrendo.com was taken over by a Russian internet porn ring. Girlfrendo split, but no one wanted to stop playing. Their buddy Johan was called in to play on a 7” for a Swedish label called Dolores. Love is All’s first single, “Lost Thrills,” was released in an ambitious pressing of 300. Their old pal Kevin loved it so much that he asked them to record a single for his new label, What’s Your Rupture? And when Fredrik Eriksson was asked to play Sax on the single , Love is All was officially born. Without expectation, the band began to write. They experimented with different directions for their sound, but the answer was presented to them in one whirlwind day, when they wrote and recorded “Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up,” and the Love is All sound was discovered – “It was made in one breath and recorded in one take a couple hours later.” explains Nicholaus. Writing was followed by recording, a very logical step for most bands. Love is All and What’s Your Rupture? were keen on asking Woodie Taylor to produce. Woodie had done some work with Lee Perry, drummed with Morrissey and the Meteors, but, more importantly, recorded and produced Comet Gain’s Realistes LP… which is everyone’s favorite anyway. Unfortunately, no one had the money to go over to England or bring Woddie and all his echo boxes to Sweden…. so the band recorded three songs in about three hours on a small 8 track bleeding with noise and hiss and mailed them to Woodie’s lovely Windsor estate, which, incidentally, is located just down the road from a very old Jimmy Page. Woodie added reverb and some top secret tricks… we really can’t tell. While other new bands were dropping mp3’s all over the internet, Love is All decided to take a more traditional, more punk rock approach to getting their music heard – they made four 7”s before ever making a full-length, the covers of which were hand silk-screened in Kevin Pederson’s kitchen, and sent them to independent radio stations like WFMU who instantly championed their songs. In fact, most of the people who first helped get the band’s name out there happened upon them by sheer coincidence. NME made “Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up” Single of the Week after Sean Forbes, the infamous buyer at the Rough Trade Shop in London, realized he received ten copies more than he should have and thought some journalists should hear them immediately. Two weeks after being made Single of the Week, the band received a call from John Peel to fly to London to record a legendary Peel Session. And so they decided it was time to make a record, which they called Nine Times That Same Song. Songs on the album combine elements of many different genres – dance punk, Riot Grrrl, No Wave, indie pop – and fuse them into one wholly unique thing, the inevitable conclusion of a band whose influences lie all over the map. “Josephine loves old indie punk bands like Kleenex and X-Ray Spex, I'm really into Can, Brian Eno, The Kinks, Jonathan Richman, Slayer... one record I think we all like is the first Roxy Music album!” says Markus. Nicholaus says simply, “I guess we influenced each other a lot.” The album spread like a wildfire upon release, popping up all over the internet and into the hands of a few journalists eager to hear the band that magically had a Peel Session before an album. Before long, they were being written about in the New York Times, Spin and landed on the cover of The Fader, solely by word-of-mouth and a true love of the band’s songs. When it was announced that the band would be playing a few US shows, among them 2006’s SXSW festival, a frenzy broke out amongst music fans, resulting in packed, sold-out shows throughout Texas, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City, where more than one fan crowd surfed and everyone sang along on the top of their lungs. This is the reaction a good dose of love will inspire. Especially when it’s from Love is All.

VIVIAN GIRLS

Although only a band for a little more than a year, the Vivian Girls charms have already worked their magic on their short road to "out of nowhere" status. With their irresistable mix of 60's girl-group sounds, punk, post-punk and shoegaze, the 'Girls have mastered blurring the lines of genres and coming up with something aggressive yet beautiful; simple, gutsy music with a lot of class and melody. But it's not so out-of-nowhere as it seems. Cassie Ramone (gtr, vocals) and Kickball Katy (bass, vocals, drums) were longtime friends from high school, so when Frankie Rose (drums, vocals, bass) and Cassie decided to start a band, Katy seemed the obvious choice to complete the lineup. Spurred on by sharing common (and uncommon) influences, the girls started writing material and playing live pretty quickly in their adopted hometown of Brooklyn. Within the first couple of months they had already developed a strong local following, supporting acts like Jay Reatard, Japanther and King Khan BBQ Show as well as finding kindred spirits in other locals like Crystal Stilts, Cause Co-Motion! and The Woods, with whom they've shared many bills and helped develop a local scene. Turning some heads at SXSW and a few national tours this year, the 'Girls came back to NYC brandished with a new, powerful weapon. A killer debut single, "Wild Eyes," on the Plays With Dolls label. The record was a can't miss for even the snobbiest of music geeks, mixing the girl-group harmonies of the Shangri-Las, the 'gaze-iness of My Bloody Valentine, and the urgency of the Wipers. Can't lose with that trifecta, and it's something they've proved over twelve inches as well as seven.. Featuring an A-Side full of hope and a B-Side almost without any, the self-titled debut LP on Mauled By Tigers stirred so much pandemonium on the internet that it sold out in just a few short days. Such a cohesive and fully-realized debut wouldn't be left to languish in the world of the "Out-Of-Print", but don't fret! Even before it's release, it was picked up by indie/garage powerhouse In The Red Records, former home of the Black Lips, The Ponys and Jay Reatard. With a repress on LP and CD due in the early Fall, the newly minted Vivian Girls obsessives can breathe a sigh of relief knowing it'll be available again. With a single on up-and-coming indie Woodsist, and another on new home In The Red, the 'Girls show no signs of stopping the assault on your heartstrings. With an upcoming year full of touring and recording a follow-up LP, expect to see the Vivian Girls working their charms not far from your house, your turntable or your neighbor's ears.

LINKS

• Love is All on Myspace
• Vivian Girls on Myspace
• Nodzzz on Myspace

return to the calendar