Move over Slade and Roy Wood, indie rabble-rousers Palma Violets are muscling in on the Christmas song market… with a difference. New single Last Christmas On Planet Earth (below) is not exactly Joy To The World, as the title suggests. The track is in fact part of an “advent calendar” of things including poems and covers – content as it’s sometimes called these days – the band are posting online ahead of Christmas Day so they’ve not lost the festive spirit entirely. Singer Samuel Thomas Fryer explains why they’ve come over all (bad) Santa.
The music we were listening to around the making of our second album have elements of what we call ‘pub rock’ and what others would call ‘pre punk’ – the great acts of the late 70s: Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, Brinsley Schwarz, Dr Feelgood, Slade, Kilburn And The High Roads – blues music that you can dance to.
Although we never set out initially to write a Christmas song, the melodies and riffs we were writing had a warm and reflective yet upbeat feel and the idea and the song came together at the right time for us to release the single.
We felt we’d bring a modern feel to the theme of the Christmas song, reflecting the paranoia of the modern world. People are pessimistic about the future, governments leading us into self annihilation… and things we see in the papers, movies, films and TV all bringing in other paranoias of things we aren’t in control of: wars, tsunamis, meteors, earth quakes, there’s a new thing for people to have anxieties about every day. the majority of us now walk on a Apocalyptic mind.
The song structure starts off humorous, but towards the end becomes more heartfelt and serious. This balance between humour and seriousness is something Palma Violets embrace but have never been ever able to control. We recorded the song in Eastcote studios and produced it ourselves with the engineering help of Joe Jones.
Samuel Thomas Fryer@PalmaViolets
For more head to Palmaviolets.co.uk.
