By Lewis MacLean. Images: Stuart J Clapp.
Blue Violet’s first album ‘Late Night Call’s was released in 2022 and received with appreciation and impressive reviews that talk of exciting fuzzy guitar intros and moody synth laden sonic landscapes. Hailing from a mixture of Argyll and the West Country, the north-London based singer-songwriter husband and wife team, Sam and Sarah, are regarded as fine storytellers, who boast a diverse musical repertoire. They spent the end of 2024 supporting Echobelly on a 16-date UK tour (check out our review of the Bournemouth date) and are set to release their new album later this month.
They said of the tour: “It was great! It was a really nice way to end the year, we’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes preparing for the new album coming out next year, so it’s just really, really nice to get out on tour and meet people. Echobelly we’re lovely to tour with too.”
Sarah added that one of the highlights was their Exeter date.
“There was just a really, really nice energy. I think Sam pointed out that it was Saturday and it was payday, so everybody was just in a really good mood,” she laughed.
Luckily, Storm Darragh didn’t manage to blow them off course.
“We managed to dodge the storm altogether,” said Sam. “There was that freak three days of snow in the middle of November and then it went back to being not that cold again, but we had happened to have an day off whilst there was a really bad snow storm in Scotland, then by the next day it had cleared.
“They literally closed everything and you couldn’t get anywhere, so if our gig had been on THAT day it would’ve been difficult.”
Sarah and Sam were previously in another band – Broken Bones Matilda – before forming Blue Violet during the pandemic.
“We had a bit of time to think about what we really wanted musically, and we just made the new album and kind of felt it didn’t fit the old band, so we just wanted to shift it a bit – rebrand,” explained Sam. “I think EVERYBODY had a lot of time to think over that period of time… so it just gave us an opportunity to send it in the direction we wanted it to go.”
Sarah added: “Broken Bones Matilda was a lot more Americana and part of the reason we moved away from that is because it wasn’t really in keeping within our influences and sounds. We have more of a British or French identity and we were always drawn to music that was kind of a bit more diverse in genres. BBM was more in an Americana world that we wanted to move away from.
She continued: “We started using a lot more synths. and we brought in our 90s influences; grunge and more so a bit of grunge, and a bit of rock. I think more so than Americana, it became a lot rockier in performance.”
Sam added: “ I guess it’s about challenging ourselves, and learning from the people we worked with. We’ve always been lucky with the people we’ve worked with, in production and musically, so we’re learning a lot about how we wanted to create music as we go along and this felt a lot more in keeping with us stylistically and what we like.”
The pair enjoy touring, adding that they have probably played every small-to-medium sized venue in London and Bristol, as well as a good share across the south.
“I think It’s nice to go to venues that have survived a long time because they’ve got so much history and you really feel the nature of them is to support the artists and you really feel that when you’re there,” said Sarah. “It’s always very sad when venues shut down… like Mulls, in Bath we were very sad about because it’s where we cut our teeth.
“I often think with venues the grimier, the better. You want your feet stuck to the ground, you can feel the thousands who have played before.”
The band will be back on the road this year, promoting their new album, Faux Animnaux, set for release on January 24th.
“This album is kind of more about human observation, the irony of human behaviour,” said Sarah.
“Sam’s type of writing style is very observational, he likes to sit quietly and watch how people behave and interact. I think this album is quite focussed on that. In terms of where we want to take it, the most important thing for us right now is to continue to grow the live show. We just to get out in front of as many audiences as possible. For us that a really, really important element of the music. That’s how we built the band in the first place by continuing to play loads of lives show. So we just want to continue doing that this year and next year.”
- Blue Violet have an album launch show at London’s The Grace on January 25th. For more information, click here.
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