"Share the Joy," the 2011 album by Brooklyn trio Vivian Girls, starts off with the distinctive rumble of a drone strike in progress before suddenly veering into a lollygagging eighth-note groove for beginner musicians.
Over the opener, "The Other Girls," drifts Cassie Ramone's pre-emptive warning: "I don't want to be like the other girls" — sung in a sly, dislocated mid-Atlantic drawl that's part-Catherine Earnshaw of "Wuthering Heights," part-Bushwick caterwaul. It's in that lyric that Ramone (whose real name is Cassie Gryzmkowski) appears to be portending a future of going it alone, and sure enough the band split in January 2014.
Vivian Girls were born from a special gang of girlfriends that included Ramone, Katy Goodman and Ali Koehler. Nearly as much has been written about their camaraderie — sisterly, sardonic and often delivered in a sweaty trifecta of near-matching bangs — as their breakup, when the group decided to forego making music together, but without the drawn-out hysterics of a public disavowing.