This article is about the Australian band; for other uses, see Vivian Girls (disambiguation)

Vivian Girls (disambiguation)

Vivian Girls are a Brooklyn-based indie rock group .Vivian Girls may also refer to:*Characters in a multimedia work by outsider artist Henry Darger*Vivian Girls , the debut album by lo-fi/punk band Vivian Girls...

The Vivian Girls were an indie rock

Indie rock

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...

 band in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, around 2000. Their music was heavily influenced by early 1980s New Wave

New Wave music

New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

 and referenced both Australian post punk artists (the title of the instrumental Oh, Piano Piano can be seen to be a Ron Rude

Ron Rude

Ron Rude is a rock and roll musician in Melbourne, Australia. He was part of the post punk "little band scene" that flourished in Melbourne in the late 1970s - 1980s, and is best known for staging a hunger strike in the window of local record shop Missing Link, and the demand that local radio...

 reference) and Situationism. They released one self-titled album on the Radio One label, in 2000. Shortly afterward, vocalist and saxophonist Amy Clarke left the band to join ninetynine

Ninetynine

Ninetynine is an indie band based in Melbourne, Australia. The band was founded by Laura Macfarlane, who played drums in Sleater-Kinney, in 1996 as a solo project. The first album, 99, was recorded with her playing all the instruments. Not long after she assembled a band with Cameron Potts and...

, and the rest of the band reconstituted as Flesh Vs. Venom.

The name "The Vivian Girls" comes from the work of outsider art

Outsider Art

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...

ist Henry Darger

Henry Darger

Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago, Illinois...

.