Palma Violets - 180
- Written by David Beech
London-based quartet Palma Violets are a band with a buzz surrounding them that a swarm of wasps would be proud of. NME gave them the award “Best Song of 2012” for their début single and album opener 'Best of Friends'; while Zane Lowe selected the band's second single 'Step Up for the Cool Cats' as “the hottest record in the world”. Needless to say the band obviously have a lot to live up to and with expectations raised so highly you could be forgiven for thinking that they might have set the bar a little too high for their forthcoming début album 180.
The second track from the album, the aforementioned 'Step Up for the Cool Cats', instils a certain archaic charm that runs like lifeblood through the song by means of a 60s inspired organ which is complimented by Vaccines-esque guitar work. Indeed, the band as a whole have far more in common with The Vaccines than they do bands such as The Libertines or The Strokes to which many a critic drew early comparisons to last year.
There's a distinct garage rock ethos upheld by Palma Violets across the whole of 180 which is exacerbated by fuzzy production quality courtesy of Pulp's Steve Mackey. Of course this is intentional and doesn't equate to bad production, merely an aesthetic decision which snowballs to the point of being infuriating the more you listen. This is most evident on 'Rattlesnake Highway'. It sounds as if this has been recorded on a four track in someone's bedroom. Instead of giving the song a feel of generations past, it merely hampers what would otherwise be a great track.
Thankfully the track that follows 'Chicken Dippers' isn't resigned to the same production as it's predecessor. There's still a large degree of garage-rock fuzz over the top. However excellent drum parts and perhaps the strongest vocal stylings on the album thankfully overshadow the overt production quality, allowing the song to fall in to place as one of 180's better tracks, while track seven, 'Tom the Drum' has taken more than one leaf out of Jim Morrison's book and is what The Doors would have sounded like if they made a surf-pop record.
The title of strongest song on the album easily falls to the band's début single 'Best of Friends' which is unfortunately, as I've said, the album opener. This leaves the rest of what comes after feeling somewhat flat. Sounding like The Vaccines if they jammed with Black Kids playing Ramones covers in a sweaty club in NYC, 'Best of Friends' is a sure fire festival favourite this Summer. If only it were indicative of the rest of the album.
'Best of Friends' B-Side 'Last of the Summer Wine' is another highlight of the album and sees the pace slowed right down. Vocally this track brings to mind Stephin Merrit of Magnetic Fields fame. The guitars are suitably jangly throughout and when coupled with the organ really encapsulates late-summer evenings spent in a beer garden or at a festival.
While not strictly a bad album Palma Violets really did set the bar too high for themselves with their singles. 180 feels like an album full of ideas only half realised. There's an overt sense of erraticness throughout and some songs seem to lack any sense of pace as they stop and start in staccato bursts. The production quality alone makes this album somewhat worse than it has any right to be and songs which seem to be too distortion-happy could be easily improved just by cleaning up the fuzz. Overall though 180 is an admirable first effort from a band who've fallen victim to their own hype. Given time to mature, however, Palma Violets could be gracing the hallowed halls of the indie Pantheon before they know it.
180 is out on February 25 and is available from amazon