Los Angeles trio Vivian Girls bring their ethereal fuzz rock to the desert in the new video for “Sludge.” It’s the third single off their highly anticipated comeback album, Memory, out September 20th via Polyvinyl Records.
In their latest visual, Vivian Girls teleport like specters between the mountains and the suburbs — they even make a pit stop for Slushies at the 7-11. “You said it matters nothing of what God thinks/She kills us all,” sings guitarist Cassie Ramone, strumming over a listless stretch of reverb.
Alex Ross Perry, the filmmaker behind the 2019 rock and roll drama Her Smell, directed the clip. In the movie, Elizabeth Moss plays a rock star on the path to self-destruction; Ross Perry cited Vivian Girls as a key influence when drawing up the concept.
“I just counted: there are four different photos of Vivian Girls in the look book I made for Her Smell,” he said in a press release. “If you had told me when I was first seeing them at Death By Audio (or was it Union Pool?) in 2008 (or was it late 2007?) that over a decade later, we’d be collaborating on a music video, I would have been alarmed at the specificity of this prophecy.
“The notion was to invent a video for ‘Sludge’ that honored The Valley,” adds Ross Perry, “toying with suburban nothingness and alienation, honoring filming locations from E.T. that are still emanating traces of decades-old magic. To explore the dichotomy of light and dark, mortal and immortal, self and self. Of then and now…”
Vivian Girls will kick off their first U.S. tour in five years on October 4th at the Regent in Los Angeles.