Not quite, says Palma Violets guitarist and vocalist Sam Fryer. “We really didn’t know how to put ourselves on the internet,” he laughs. “But not just that, we weren’t really ready to put our tracks online. We’d written about four or five songs and we’d only just learned to play them as a band. We started getting interest from people just talking to each other. It was quite a scary but exciting time, because we had all these different record labels knocking on our door and wanting to see our band.”
Sam says that although the internet is a useful tool for emerging artists, the accessibility and simplicity of the medium can have its dangers.
“I find that people are so quick to put their songs online these days,” he says. “They do it before they’re even ready for anything. They get to a point where other people are judging them on their songs even though they probably weren’t recorded properly, and they haven’t seen the band for what they truly are: a live act.”
That’s why Sam believes that patience paid off for the boys in the end. “If we had recorded at those early stages, the recordings wouldn’t have sounded good at all. You could definitely see the potential in us live, but we definitely weren’t ready for anything else.
“If you get yourselves sorted as a live act and then know when you’re ready to record, by the time you do release recordings, it’s something that people will be excited about.
“Bands can do what they want to do I suppose – Arctic Monkeys famously used MySpace and things like that when they were first starting out and it worked for them, but it wouldn’t have worked for us. We’re quite old fashioned.”
The band’s early performances have already become the stuff of legends. Holed up at Studio 180 in Lambeth, UK – an aging art studio/squat, the four-piece regularly threw wild parties and impromptu gigs for friends and fans, who would cram into an airless basement that could hold no more than 50 people.
“We just seemed to play to our friends in our basement and things happened naturally from there,” Sam recalls. “That was just the environment that worked for us.”
The lads found themselves in some similarly tight spots on their recent US tour, playing a host of house parties and sweaty pizza joints in NYC before heading to Coachella. Being the first time Palma Violets had ventured over to the States, Sam says he was shocked at how news of the band had spread, and how many people went out of their way to see what the hype was all about.
“We found that we met lots of great people and we were travelling to places we’d never even heard of, and people still came down to see us, and they seemed to enjoy the band and enjoy the record. That was quite overwhelming – the fact that you can reach out so far to so many people. It’s amazing.
“We also found that there is a very high standard of bands everywhere in America, and they seem to be doing it for the right reasons – or that’s what I find anyway. In England there are a lot of scenesters and people that are in bands because just because they want to look like they’re in a band.”
That’s probably why Palma Violets’ brand of primitive, garage rock‘n’roll has been received so well in their homeland – it comes at a time when bands are opting for synthesis over guitars, and polished production over raw, real recordings.
“There’s definitely a drought of guitar bands in England. There has been for a long time. It’s just because it’s quite rare for guitar bands to be played on the radio in this day and age and people are far more interested in computers than they are in listening to music that sounds like it’s been made by a human. It’s quite sad really.”
And when it was time for these four humans to bunk down in the studio, Sam admits that nerves were running high.
“We went to a space in East London and you could feel the tension in the air,” Sam remembers. “Everybody was nervous, especially me. But those five songs we recorded ended up being pretty much our best ever recordings, and some of those ended up on the album.”
Though 180 has only been out for a few months, the band are already setting their sights on introducing some new material.
“I’m looking forward to having a bit of time off after this,” Sam says. “I know everybody is excited to start writing some more songs. We’re starting to see how much we’ve progressed as a band over the past two years. Before, Chilli (Jesson – bass/vocals) could barely play a note on the bass, and now I say he’s the best bassist in London.
“We’ve had some ideas while we’ve been on the road, but we don’t seem to write together on the road. We find it difficult for other people to listen in on us. We like to play together and make our own mistakes together. That’s where we’re most comfortable.”
BY CALLUM FITZPATRICK
