“Ever since I’ve started writing and recording music, it’s been my diary,” Cassie Ramone says ahead of two South Florida tour dates in December, presented by PureHoney, in support of her 2024 solo album, Sweetheart. “As I’ve grown older the contents of that diary change and the way that I speak about things changes.”
The diary fell open with Ramone’s breakthrough band, Vivian Girls, a Brooklyn trio formed in 2007 sounding like a new iteration of your favorite lo-fi garage rock — think The Wipers, Le Tigre, The Raincoats and Plumtree. Vivian Girls put out four energetic and addicting albums over the next 12 years before parting ways. They were as relatable as punk without the politics of punk, singing outright love songs in something of a break with Riot Grrrl practice and the esoteric, academic lyricism that Pavement handed down to later indie bands.
Arriving 16 years after Vivian Girls self-titled debut, Ramone’s third solo album registers differently — like a prognosis of the batteries dying in some neglected dream machine, delivered in the moodier vein of U.S. Girls or Broadcast. Ramone tells PureHoney that while recording, music was about the only thing in her life going well. She was performing live again, in a Britney Spears cover band, but everything else by her reckoning was falling to pieces. “Making the album was my North Star,” she says.
Sweetheart’s opener, “I’m Going Home,” showcases the delicate layering of sounds that she and her and Richmond, Virginia-based collaborator Dylan White put together as she mapped out songs on back-and-forth drives between New York and Virginia. The diary-like intimacy is audible in Sweetheart, and Ramone says that “Joy to the World” is maybe the most honest song she’s ever written.
The candor was abetted by accidents of creation that conspired to make songs feel more complete. One example Ramone gives is “Together,” a faster-paced ballad that evokes the crunching of autumn leaves and driving with windows down. The song had no clear ending, Ramone says, until the vocal lines nudged themselves into that position in a way that clicked for her and White .
The album also features a soft-spoken collaboration with Mac DeMarco, “The Only Way I Know How,” that follows a string of collaborations going back more than a decade. Ramone says the song song takes “Do It Again” by Steely Dan as a reference point for key changes and artistic tensions that the two enjoy about that jazz-inclined classic rock duo. After striking up a rapport while tracking Ramone’s “Leave Me Alone” in DeMarco’s studio, the two reconvened in 2022 to record the guitar and drums that later made it to the final song.
On “He’s Still On My Mind,” an organ-like synthesizer fades in as Ramone’s soothing, faintly harmonized voice drifts across acoustic guitar strums and latches on to White’s loping drums, everything sounding like a lost track from Tame Impala’s Lonerism. “Running Dry” is an ominous stagger, something one might hear in a troubled dreamscape full of breath-stealing scening shifts.
An album-length video accompanying Sweetheart, available on YouTube, is taken from Ramone’s everyday sights around Richmond, along train tracks and in streets. It’s also a break from music norms, an album video capturing in a documentary verite style the liminal space from which the music emerged.
With Sweetheart out in the world, Ramone says she’s been listening to Shower Curtain, Julie, Lightheaded, and “April Suzanne” by Robert Lester Folsome. She has also been challenging, or daring, herself to record a ten-song Weezer tribute album, with each track coming from from a different Weezer LP.
The music and video for Sweetheart came out better than she had initially expected. Her next (non-Weezer) solo project will have tough competition to follow. But Ramone sounds ready for it. “If you aren’t making music that’s true to yourself and is the music that you want to hear in this world,” she says, “what’s the point?”
PureHoney presents a Happy HollowDaze weekend w Cassie Ramone, 8pm Friday December 12 at Churchill’s Pub in Miami and 8pm Saturday December 13 at Propaganda in Lake Worth. Rude Television and The Dreambows open both shows, with MOLD! and Kenny Moe at Churchill’s, and the The Dewars and Nervous Monks at Propaganda. cassieramone.com ~ Erik Kvarnberg
