Thursday 25 October 2012

Violet - What You Gave To Me

One of the problems with the internet is that it makes everything seem bigger and more important than it actually is. Another is that it doesn’t have a pause button. As soon as something is uploaded and anyone has any sort of judgement on it, no matter how poorly thought out or how little knowledge on the subject they have, they can press play with their opinion and declare it to the world. We call this the megaphone of ignorance.

Earlier this year Paul Lester’s Guardian New Band of the Day column caused a bit of a stir by featuring model and Bob Geldof’s daughter and her new band Violet. Normally Paul’s column gets a small number of reader’s comments after it is published, but the Violet feature and its accompanying thumbs up praise led to what seemed to be every lurking reader crawling out of the woodwork with an opinion. Many of these were scathing comments based on the one song that was featured and / or seemed to attack Geldof's right to coverage because of her celebrity status.  Now as any self-respecting music fan will know you should never judge a band on just one song or background, but we’ve probably all done it at some time and occasionally had to eat humble pie later.

It’s why when two weeks after this event, when we wrote about Violet we did so with a bit more knowledge than many of the negative “this is the sort of bland tosh for which the word "meh" was coined,” comments had, because we had seen the band live and like Lester were impressed.

We don’t care if Pixie Geldof is something of a celebrity, or if she has a marketing budget behind her, or if she has a famous daddy. Because all we care about is one single fact; do we like the music? This is what Breaking More Waves is about. Label or not / signed or unsigned / industry contacts or alone, all we’re listening for is something to make our ears orgasm. If we keep ourselves tied up with mental chains we’re limiting our opportunities to experience something special.

What You Gave To Me is one of those orgasms. It’s not a fast and furious short-fused explosion of quivering trembles. No, this is a long slow building moment of pleasure, best played in the low light of the witching hour. Lay back and enjoy its spell. 

Violet - What You Gave To Me

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