CMJ Music Marathon Wrap-Up, Part One

This year’s CMJ Music Marathon, held last week in New York, delivered yet again another onslaught of new, now bands trying to be next year’s big thing. This year’s edition of the marathon, featured no, as it has in recent years past, real megawatt reunions or U.S. debuts. Much of the lineup, in fact, seemed a repeat of SXSW, or the indie-er side of the Winter Music Conference, earlier this year.

Hype still abounded, though, with two of the most ubiquitous bands being female-fronted. The Vivian Girls, an all-female trio from Brooklyn, must be reaching their collective death bed this week, having often played multiple shows a day over the week. Theirs is a shoegazy, fuzzy pop that’s punky and slightly twee at the same time.

While they must make for a great outer-borough party band, though, they seem slightly lost on bigger stages, like that of Bowery Ballroom, where they played Saturday night. Likewise, while their songs are easily digested, the band needs to sharpen them further if they hope to not go down in the sea of past year’s forgotten cute girl guitar bands.