Blue Violet look forward to the coming year

 Blue Violet have a busy start to this new year of 2025 preparing for their forthcoming second album Faux Animaux due for release on 24 January. They also have a new single Sweet success that has just been released.

 They are in essence made up of Sarah McGrigor & Sam Gotle, lifelong friends who formed Blue violet getting on towards 10 years ago. They describe themselves as a band but they are both the permanent fixture and major influence on the music, bringing in musicians for recording and live work.

Sarah McGrigor & Sam Gotle - Credit Stuart J Clapp

I spent some time speaking to them both, starting with asking about their roots and history up to this juncture. 

Sarah McGrigor “I'm Scottish, but we are now based in London”.

ReturnToSound  “What about you, Sam? Where do you originate from?

Sam Gotle “ Kind of in between Bristol and Bath, a Somerset Village” 

RTS “How did you come to meet each other?”

Sarah “Well, we met originally when we were really young in Bath, because I had moved there for school. We knew each other since we were like 13, then started making music together about nine years ago”.

RTS “How did the music side start?”

Sam to Sarah “You started singing, didn't you?”

Sarah “That's what kicked it off. We were living in a house full of musicians and going to open mics and Sam was in a band, a rock band. And then I saw how much fun everybody else was having. I wanted to do that too. So, yeah, that's kind of how we started making music together. There was a couple of our friends that we started a band with back then, over time, it went into this…  into Blue Violet. 

RTS “So when did you first start singing together in front of an audience?” 

Sarah “Maybe 2016, the first album came out in 22, but delayed because of COVID, it was recorded in 2019”.

RTS “I dread to mention the C word but it obviously affected your progress?” 

Sarah “It definitely had a very big impact. I mean, for everybody, but we found that it had a big impact on our progression and where we were. We were in another band and we decided just to rebrand, make something new. And that's when Blue Violet was born”.

RTS “you call yourself a band but ultimately it is the two of you?” 

Sam  “When we do the live shows, it really is a band. And we kind of refer to ourselves as a band, I guess because when we record as well, we work with other musicians. So the sound is always bigger than just the two of us.

We do strip back shows occasionally, but really the music that we make is kind of us at the forefront of it. And we've always got incredible musicians that kind of come in”.

RTS “Did you play some of the new songs on the tour?” 

Sarah “It was about half and half, but I think everything that we played is out. So we played the singles. Yeah, the one that we played that wasn't out when we toured was Sweet Success, that's just come out now”.

Faux Animaux Album Cover

RTS With new album Faux Animaux in particular, who completes which part as regards song writing?”

Sam “I get the songs together and then map out how they would work as a collection, basically. But Sarah's there along the way. Yeah, Yeah, I can tell when she thinks something is not happening”. 

Sarah “I think it's definitely like we've  perfected the process now between us, right? It's like Sam is quite an insular writer, he goes off, he writes, whatever he's thinking at the time. Then he'll bring it to me, we work on it together and we try it out as a song to work within this band. And then if we feel like it works, we go a bit deeper. And if we don't feel like it works. Well .. Yeah”. 

RTS “Yeah. It's a democracy”. 

Sarah “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. I think the thing that's cool about it is that because we've been working together now for a really long time, it's like Sam has the ability to share a lot of my thoughts. So when he brings me songs for us to work on, very often, I really feel very connected to it as if it's kind of coming from my brain. It's really amazing. And I think that stems from having a lot of conversations about all the things that we write about or that Sam writes about” 

RTS “Is there a theme running through the songs on Faux Animaux?  

Sam “I think maybe a wider view on society, I guess. There's animal metaphors in there as well. On Sweet Success you live your life like an animal”.

RTS “The song Teeth Out is melodically and lyrically interesting. What is the story behind that song?”

Sam “I wanted to write a song that summed up the feeling of anxiety to do with external things in the world that you can't really control. And getting to the point where you can't, you can't keep up with words anymore.

So you're literally baring your teeth as if you're ready to bite, like an animal. So that was the whole idea, but it wasn't the easiest thing to write. I was just on a train and I started writing that song in my head. I thought I needed to get home so I could  write it down. I went into the toilet and recorded it as  a little voice note. But yeah, I think that was the kind of the thought behind it, in terms of the theme.

Even though we've got a lot of songs on the album that I guess are quite upbeat and they use synth and loud guitars, maybe a bit more like riff based songs, I am also a sucker for a traditional song writing format”

Blue Violet are at a few venues to promote their new album as below:

JANUARY

(Album launch date) 

 Sat 25 London The Grace 

FEBRUARY 

(Scottish album launch dates)

Wed 05 Edinburgh Sneaky Pete's

Thu 06 Glasgow King Tuts

Fri 07 Dundee Beat Generator

The interview moves onto another of the stand out songs on the album

RTS “Barefoot on the Seine, that's another interesting number, which doesn't quite go where you think it's going. You obviously intended it to be like that”?  

Sam “From seeing a lot of these protests happening, it was towards the end of COVID actually. That's where the song came from  and I think that to try and get the point across, and to try and bring as much emotion as we could, it was that big, clangy, acoustic guitar, quite grungy and gritty. It was fun to just stick like a completely out of the blue, key change in there. I think when I did it, on the demo I thought, is that a good idea? But then once you've done it, you kind of think, well, what's going to match that now that I've committed to it?”  

RTS Faux Animaux is another one that stood out to me, the last track?” 

Sam “In terms of everything on the album, that probably had the biggest journey, because it started out as a song I wrote in a different band ages ago,  probably 10 years ago. We never finished it but we had the riff. It's very different now with the name Faux Animaux which it didn’t have before. Then we ended up putting in that finish to the song, because originally it had a really big rock ending. But then in the studio, it didn't really feel right. So we ended up going with the ending that's on there now, which is much softer. This was all done on the day in the studio with the producer’s input”.

 RTS “Who was your producer for this one?

Sam  “Kim Allen. Also he mixed the first album. We kind of co-produced this album and we went in with much more finished. We try to do a lot of  arrangement before we go into the studio and put in instruments you think you want on there. We then take it to a producer and see what they want to add or take away

It's quite a nice way of doing it.I don't really have the patience to record an album myself from start to finish, I don't really know enough about sound design. I think what was really nice about working with Tim is that he's got a really, really incredible knowledge in synths. We wanted to dive into that world a little bit further. Yeah. I really enjoyed the synth side of things here”.

RTS “There is a more synth base to the production on these songs, was that a conscious decision?” 

Sam “I can play a bit of keys and I enjoy playing on synth. It might be an advantage to an arrangement, I always think sometimes not to be too virtuoso, especially on something like a synth.I think as well, cause they're quite distinct sounds it can be quite jarring if it's not used in the right way”.  

“I think we definitely bring in a lot of our influences as both of us really enjoy music from the seventies, eighties and nineties. I think the first album was more kind of seventies, eighties, and then this one was more eighties, nineties influences”.

RTS I'm always interested to hear what you grew up listening to and what I especially like to hear is what people are listening to now or what's new? 

Sam “ I definitely Britpop. I remember all of those bands being played all the time quite, quite vividly. Suede and yeah, obviously Oasis and Blur, but you know, those were always on the radio in the background and my dad used to play them a lot. So for me, it was a lot of that.”.

Sarah “My dad listened to a lot of 70s, like Fleetwood Mac songs.Bruce, all that kind of stuff. And then, in my teenage years it was more kind of Nirvana… Yeah

..But I was always really drawn in by the quite masculine female voice. And that was something that I always just loved Stevie, Stevie Nicks.I like PJ Harvey, people like that, that have these really beautifully rich voices. Now, the people that I listen to, people like Saint Vincent, or I've been listening to Zella Day quite a lot recently as well. I quite like Sharon Van Etten as well. All those raspy female vocals. Nick Cave is always a favourite”.

RTS “Have you toured with anyone who really amazed you?”

Sarah  “There was a band actually that we did just one show with … they were called The Last Internationale. They were actually a band that we had seen in the States years ago. I think it must have been like 10 years ago.And I remember walking in and seeing her on stage. She just had this incredible presence,  bouncing around. It was actually before I decided that that was going to be my career so I saw her and I thought, wow, that's what I want to do. She was like a real inspiration to me. It was kind of quite a crazy full circle experience to be able to support her or support them”.  

Sam “We did a guest performance with the Gaslight Anthem three nights in a row at the Roundhouse in March last year. They're my absolute favourite band of all time. Yeah. They were really, really lovely people. And that was just amazing”.

 Blue Violet sound and look set for the coming year, their partnership clearly works as it has stood the test of time and now the creative side is showing fruit. This might be the year they are unleashed on the music world…

Blue Violet Website