North London alt-pop duo Blue Violet announce details of their new album alongside delivering the lead single, 'Boogie Shoes'.
Faux Animaux which will be released on September 27 on Me & My Records via High Head Recordings. The record’s lead single is a grainy glam stomp aimed midway between Queens Of The Stone Age and St Vincent.
Blue Violet – Blue for their melancholic element, Violet for the vividness – wrote ‘Boogie Shoes’ as a post-pandemic entreaty to get out and grab life again. “It felt like we were all going through a mass depression and needed to pull ourselves out of it, but that is sometimes easier said than done,” explains guitarist and co-singer Sam Gotley. Hence this vision of London’s night-crawlers comes with a seedy
undercurrent reflecting “the temptation that goes with a night out in the belly of the beast, where even humanity’s best might fall from grace.”
Listen to ‘Boogie Shoes’ by Blue Violet on the Premier League Playlist on Spotify.
Last month, Blue Violet shared one off single ‘Human After All’, an upbeat, synth-leaning track with anthropologist themes. It is, says Sarah McGrigor – crystalline singer of Scottish-French-Moroccan heritage – “about individuals and the collective. Not thinking that you have a big impact as a small
individual, but actually, if everybody has the same viewpoint then we can achieve big things.”
On the album Faux Animaux, Blue Violet continue their exploration of rich electronic avenues inspired by Calvi, St Vincent, Radiohead, Bowie, recent Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Twin Peaks. With their songwriting as sublime as ever, they’ve become one of the most enthralling underground propositions of the age. Recorded in Bristol’s J&J studios with Bat For Lashes and Hannah Peel mixer / producer TJ Allen, Faux Animaux is a unified and sophisticated update of modern British alt-pop, drifting from sizzling space disco to stunning, swirling cinematic vistas.
“A lot of the themes on the album are about human observation and the ironies of human behaviour,” says Sarah. “We invent things that move us further and further away from nature and shun our animal instincts,” adds Sam. “In a sense we are fake animals sharing a planet with billions of real ones. On the other hand, our animalistic nature cannot be completely buried – we try to push it down, but it is such a
big part of us that it fights to be free.”
Blue Violet returned to the stage in March, when they were invited to play a song with The Gaslight Anthem during various shows at London’s Roundhouse, but Faux Animaux is set to usher in their own glory days. It’s a stunning amalgam of modernism and melody that spotlights not just humankind’s failings and fakery but its leaders’ too. “The fake animals could be seen as the powers that be, leading
us down paths that result in us ignoring our more natural instincts, often making decisions without our permission,” says Sam. Quietly, a beast awakens.
