Violets, The

GOTH PUNK

Go on The Violets’ Myspace site and you’ll find they describe themselves (possibly paraphrasing some grumpy reviewer or other) as a ‘cut-price Siouxsie and the Banshees covers band’. Well, if it’s good enough for the band it’s good enough for The List, and you won’t find us arguing.

While their one main influence is pretty obvious, though, that’s not to say they’re not urgent and contemporary. Their conversely bristling but funereal sound on songs like ‘Hush Away’ and ‘Carnival’ inspires twitchy shoulder-dancing on the dancefloor, and their singer Alexis has a similarly distinctive two-tone elegance in her style. It’s her voice that gives the game away though, an ethereal Siouxsie-like thing that floats over the music, whooping and rising in all the wrong places yet sounding so oddly right.

Apparently The Violets think such comparisons fall into that time-worn ‘lazy journalism’ category, but perhaps they’re just blinding themselves to the utterly obvious. Whatever, they’re not a bad band.