First Glances – Palma Violets
The power of PR is only matched by a carefully orchestrated anti-PR campaign. Don’t maintain a web/bandcamp/soundcloud page. Don’t make a song and dance about yourselves – the irony – and, crucially, if you’ve got industry nous and, so the story goes, connections, your career may start to blossom. Next step: don’t distribute demos. Instead, perhaps, charge hungry A&R men big money when the time comes.
Sound familiar? Yup, possibly-Manchester-based-would-seem-to-be-South-London-born Palma Violets don’t just share strategy with urban mystics WU LYF but also a sound – that pained yelp of their foppishly fringed frontman gives it away, the intensity of their anthemic-but-fledgling collection confirms it. Yet there’s substance on top of posturing here too, very solid foundations formed by the band’s nuclear guitar, drum and keyb-organ set-up. That they’ve an impeccable ear for all things Walkmen doesn’t hurt either, nor does the vaguely familiar whiff of success (read cash) that seems to follow the band at every step and recalls the early movements, to these ears at least, of The Vaccines (yes, before they went all radio and that).
There’s a bang-on-trend sense of nostalgia here too, and it’s all delivered during an unassuming support slot for an intense 2:54 show to which Palma Violets appear to have invited a small gaggle of friends and/or WAGS who comprise the majority of the small crowd. It’s a biased opinion, sure, but if their enthusiastic reaction is anything to go by these boys would seem to be heading to shout fire from the mountaintops very soon.
Watch this space therefore. Or don’t. See if they care. Which they probably do. But don’t tell anyone … except everyone who’ll listen. Which currently isn’t many due to obvious reasons. But that may change. Or so Palma Violets reckon. And we agree.