Viva Voce

One might imagine a band that would christen itself after a Latin phrase might be a little loftier than your garden variety Indie Rock band, but Viva Voce doesn’t have a pretentious 4AD bone in its musical body. The band was formed in 1998 by husband-and-wife duo Kevin and Anita Robinson in their hometown of Muscle Shoals, Ala., naming their new group after the literal Latin for “living voice“ but which can generally be translated as “word of mouth.”

After a stop in Nashville, the pair settled in Portland, Ore., and began building a solid fan base for their ephemeral Shoegaze soundscape.

The first few Viva Voce albums — 1998’s Hooray for Now, 2003’s Lovers Lead the Way, 2004’s The Heat Can Melt Your Brain — were created by the Robinsons on their own and featured an interesting mix of Ambient contemplation and Psychedelic explosion, which proved to make them an attractive opening act for the likes of The Shins and Jimmy Eat World. The duo’s major-ish label debut on Barsuk, 2006’s Get Yr Blood Sucked Out, found them moving toward a more consistently visceral and concussive presentation, with the Shoegaze/Psych factor dialed way up, a direction that was polished and refined on 2009’s Rose City. But the Robinsons had already started a new outfit dubbed Blue Giant, a decidedly Folk/Country group that pushed significantly different buttons than Viva Voce; their debut EP for Vanguard was a big departure.

When the Robinsons began preparing for The Future Will Destroy You, the new Viva Voce album, the Blue Giant ethic leaked into the writing process, forcing the couple to deconstruct their songs and work them down to an elemental level until they evolved into a new yet oddly familiar sound, a Psychedelia that is both soulful and forceful. As the title implies, the lyrics veer to the bleaker side of current affairs but the new Viva Voce signals a brilliant developmental step for a band that already had nailed down their distinctive differences.

This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2011.