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Vivian Girls

Jul 12, 2026 By Matthew Berlyant Photography by Matthew Berlyant Web Exclusive

There is a song on PJ Harvey’s 2000 Mercury Prize-winning album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea called “You Said Something.” In its opening line, she describes “a rooftop in Brooklyn, at one in the morning, watching the lights flash in Manhattan, I see five bridges,” and on this beautiful summer evening on a rooftop in Brooklyn in 2026 with similarly evocative views of the Manhattan skyline, I couldn’t help thinking about that song and the feeling it still evokes after all of these years.

Simply put, this was an absolutely PERFECT evening. Playing their first Brooklyn show since 2019 as the opening night of a short tour that will culminate in a pre-festival appearance at the Mosswood Meltdown festival in Oakland, Vivian Girls were phenomenal, playing a short (but not too short) set that perfectly encapsulated why they are one of the truly great bands of the 21st century.

The set favored their first three albums, particularly 2008’s indie star-making self-titled debut and 2009’s quick and even better follow-up, Everything Goes Wrong. However, songs from 2011’s Share the Joy (recorded with drummer Fiona Campbell, the only full-length she appeared on) and the 2019 comeback album Memory (their last to date) also showed up in the set, and the momentum wasn’t stunted for one second.

Starting with their traditional set opener “Walking Alone at Night,” the band blitzed through 17 songs in approximately forty-five minutes, wowing the small but dedicated audience with stunning three-part harmonies, songs that stick in your head for days after hearing them, and Cassie Ramone’s underrated guitar heroics on songs like “When I’m Gone” and “Out for the Sun.” Combined with the bouncy, anchoring bass of Katy Goodman and Ali Koehler’s steady drumming, they create a ton of noise for a three-piece.

Those who saw the band in their formative days in the late 2000s will possibly remember them playing many such rooftops in Brooklyn, though back then it was more likely that it was a Tood P or other similar DIY show instead of a ticketed club show. Nevertheless, the show evoked feelings of nostalgia for days gone by in Williamsburg when it was still full of DIY spaces, artist lofts, and ambitious musicians and college students as opposed to Wall Street types, fancy cafes, restaurants, velvet-rope clubs, and enormous, shiny condo buildings only the 0.1% could easily afford.

Nostalgia aside, this was just a perfect evening full of great tunes, vibes, weather, views, and anything else one could ask for. Long live Vivian Girls and long may they go on. Perhaps we’ll even get more shows and a new album at some point, though for now, we old fans are just grateful whenever they decide they want to play shows! Given that the last time they played in New York (this 2025 show at Le Poisson Rouge, which I reviewed HERE) was the same evening we found out that Zohran Mamdani was going to be our new mayor, it’s fitting that this evening was also magical, just in a slightly different way. Some bands can just conjure that summer feeling that Jonathan Richman sang about so long ago.