Imagine: you’re sitting barefoot in a luscious green, daisy splattered field. You lie back and stare at the sun; sharing a cigarette and a chilly beer with your girl. You exhale and pass the cigarette, smiling with bliss. That feeling, that emotion, that craving for summer; is what Viola Beach sounds like.
Viola Beach are a wonderfully chilled indie quartet from Warrington, who dabble in swooning summer vibes and dreamy shoegazing rhythms. Praised amazingly by BBC Introducing to “put on a rather stimulating performance” the four piece – fronted by Kris Leonard – are giving their contemporaries, Peace and Jaws, a run for their money.
The purring vocals of Leonard make a colossal, lasting impact on the bands EP ‘Viola Beach’, featuring almost twenty electrifying minutes of pure, lazy euphoria. Opening track ‘Daisies’ features the lyrical hook of “it’s girls like you people write songs about”, before exploding into a lethargic dream world. The more upbeat and exciting ‘Love My Love’ definitely takes a leaf out of Jaws’ ‘Milkshake’ EP; incorporating chiming guitar-riffs with breathless vocals.
The band’s Soundcloud page is bubbling with brilliance, featuring songs such as the outstandingly beautiful, tension-filled track titled ‘Coo’s Song’, which is causing quite a stir with over eight hundred listens in the past four months. Viola Beach’s page also features both an acoustic and piano version of ‘Please Let Me Please You’, prominently highlighting that this band aren’t just a one trick pony.
Viola Beach are the new wave of absent-minded indie; incorporating kooky, out-of-the-ordinary guitar riffs with breathless, purring vocals and churning out a storm of complexity. They’re a band to watch for the future and soon enough, festivals goers will be howling for them to grace their eardrums.
ELLA LOUISE SCOTT 