The cover of kissing other ppl’s new album shows Durham locals Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno —better known as Americana pop duo Viv & Riley—along with collaborator Rachel Baiman, in their jammies. Their nightgowns hang a little too big, their hair in various states of undone, and they look at the camera with a youthful mischief. It’s apt artwork for an album that carries the whimsical, late-night energy of a sleepover.
“Rachel invited Viv and I to drive across the country with her on this really long tour,” Calcagno explains just before golden hour at Cocoa Cinnamon Lakewood.
In the duo’s natural back-and-forth, Leva jumps in, “Which was really brave of [Baiman] because I had never actually hung out with her before.”
This project was born back in 2022 on those car rides, intimacy from hours in close quarters. kissing other ppl’s conception was simple: “We realized we liked a lot of the same music and thought it would be fun to try to record it,” Calcagno says. But the production was anything but simple. The tracklist grew into an experimental folk collection of covers, many of which were not originally of the folk genre.
In the midcentury modern Connecticut home of Greg D. Griffith, prolific producer of artists from Le Tigre to Pete Seeger, the trio experimented with childlike wonder. Dr. Dog’s “Where’d All the Time Go?,” one of Baiman’s selections, became Leva’s favorite, as its call-and-response harmonies made it so “Riley and Rachel got to do backup vocals, which is not our typical arrangement. And putting that to a banjo and a guitar and three singers was really fun.”
“‘Ashes of American Flags’ was also very fun,” Leva continues. The song itself evokes joy, the harmonization raw enough, at times bordering on belting, that it calls back the roots of the project—singing with friends in the car. “I got to play drums on that track, which I don’t normally do.”
Playing and camaraderie are at the core of kissing other ppl. They played with toy instruments, and played together while not recording, too—in the indoor swimming pool at Griffith’s home.
The album, released in August, has “sleepover energy,” as Calcagno describes it. The trio were “completely unconcerned. There wasn’t any big label involved or any form of pressure. I think that’s conducive to having a good time. I hope that comes across.”
All the tracks “feel emotional in some way,” Leva says. Calcagno croons on a cover of Songs: Ohia’s “Hold on Magnolia,” steeped in melancholy. The track was chosen specifically for its intensity. “‘Magnolia’ is a very heartbreaking song,” says Leva.”Honestly, that’s a lot of these songs.”
Leva says to expect a full range of emotion when kissing other ppl plays at the Pinhook on October 5. “We gathered multiple years ago to record it, and then we never played [the songs] again until last month. It feels totally new reworking them.” The group will perform some of Baiman’s tracks, as well as Viv & Riley’s, too, and maybe even a new track written recently by Leva woven in.
“It’s genuine fun for us,” says Calcagno. “There’s so much darkness that abounds everywhere. I think we often forget that we need to find moments of play and fun and lightness, too. If we can hold that alongside everything—that’s beautiful.”
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