Violet - New Waves

Let’s get this out of the way right at the start shall we? A lot of people are going to come to Violet with preconceived ideas. For this is a band fronted by one Pixie Geldof, the model who has faced ad campaigns for Agent Provocateur, Diesel and Debenhams, the sister of party girl celebrity Peaches Geldof and daughter of rock musician turned feed-the-world hero Bob Geldof.

But let’s just for a moment imagine that you know nothing about Pixie and that Violet are just another new band battling it out for the attention of your ears. It may come as a surprise that they are actually rather good. Or rather a recent live show at the Barfly in Camden pushed aside any bias that may have been lingering on our part. However, a word of caution - Y.O.U - the one song streaming online at the moment is at best average. With its simplistic pedestrian join the dots musicianship it’s hardly going to set the musical world ablaze or win any awards. In fact a recent article about the band on the Guardian’s New Band A Day column almost sent the page into meltdown as the good people of the internet raged against what they heard and read. “If you listen to her, I doubt that you will be able to hold your lunch down,” one commentator said. Well our lunch is in place, but Y.O.U doesn't inspire us in any way.

So why cover Violet on the blog at all? This is something we've been wrestling with all day. There’s hundreds of other bands who have one average song on line that could do with the small amount of exposure we’re able to provide. Is this not all about our interest being roused because of Geldof’s celebrity? No, it’s because as a music fan, we went to a gig, enjoyed what we heard and now want to tell you about that. Our difficulty is that the one studio song available leaves us shaking our head - and not in a getting-our-groove-on-into-the-music way. Geldof has a bonus in terms of publicity in the media because of her parentage, like it or not everyone will get equal priority. Stella McCartney got a similar headstart, but McCartney has continued to produce high quality designs and so has been celebrated by the fashion world. If Violet are to succeed then the music is going to have to be better than this - but at the gig we thought it was, and no we weren't drunk.

For this is what we thought at the show. Violet’s best songs make slow-drawn, candlelight come to bed lullabies. Warning: girls if you’re in our vicinity and we put a Violet on the stereo the chances are we’re wanting to see you naked. Admittedly our seduction isn’t going to go anywhere near the likes of Marvin Gaye, Barry White, George Michael or any of those other sexy music clichés. For Violet’s sound is more subtle, indie-country-atmospheric-rock compositions fronted by a singer who has a touch of the lazy-Lana’s (Del Rey obviously) to her vocal. It’s a voice that can hold the notes and even illicit the odd goosebump when Pixie let’s go a little. The question now is will what impressed us at the live performance be turned into something of merit in the studio, or will Violet let us down?

If music is about relationships, our first date in a London pub went swimmingly, but when we ‘go back for coffee’ there’s a nagging suspicion that it may not end well. The most important factor of all good music and relationships is time. Let's see how that pans out.

Violet - Y.O.U