Live review: Vivian Girls at The Earl. Sun., Sept. 28

ne thing that’s been hit particularly hard by the Orwellian gas shortage that’s crippling the Southeast is attendance at local shows. Brooklyn trio Vivian Girls tore it up for the enthusiastic, but sparse crowd that ventured to the Earl on Sunday night. The somber and freewheeling trio ran through a hazy batch of songs performed exactly as they appear on their album. Michigan’s Tyvek and local trio Rizzudo closed the show, with respectively ramshackle and adept performances.

But most people wandered out to the The Earl’s front patio during the show to socialize and speculate about the fuel crisis. Will it really be weeks before it’s over? Why isn’t this making national headlines? And where is Sonny Perdue during all of this? No radio, or television address, not even a blog saying “people, this is what we need to do...”

At least he posed on the capital steps and prayed for rain at the peak of the drought last year. Now he’s MIA when outside aide couldn’t come sooner. I read a local news website after the show that says he’s on vacation in Europe right now, which seems all too fitting. Whatever the case may be, he wasn’t at Vivian Girls’ show, and out of fear of using up what precious few gasoline drops we have left, not many other people were there either.