Violet Bones: Decline of Vaudeville

Because Rhapsody is still trying to force-feed me Christmas music like a goose destined for a fois gras future, I was once again required to troll the Internet to look for new releases today (bizarrely, I couldn't find the same list I found yesterday, either - WHAT DID I DO DIFFERENTLY?!?!!  not knowing will probably drive me crazy.  on the plus side, when my husband gets home tonight and finds me sobbing in the bathroom, hacking off my hair with the cat-shaver, at least he'll know why).  The advantage to finding a new list, of course, was finding exactly ONE new album that was both on said list and also on Rhapsody.  And guess what?  It's Violet Bones!  And I kind of love it!!!

Realistically, if you're looking for a Violet Bones review and you stumbled across this post, you've probably heard of them before.  If you're my husband, however, you haven't, so let me fill you in.  The only information I could find is from their website, which told me that this is their first album, and that they're a four-piece post-punk/rock 'n' roll outfit from Cambridge, England whose members include Rik on guitar, Oz on drums, Stu on bass, and Si on vocals.  Besides spelling "ROSS", their names are also clearly awesome, and make me wish I had a small hamster colony so I could name a wee, furry beast after each dude.  However, I already clean up enough poo between our two kids and two cats, so adding four extra hamsters into the mix would probably overload my feces-processing capacities.  Scratch that, I'll make paper hamsters instead.


Right now you're probably wondering why I didn't become an artist.  Believe me, I considered it.

For all the BS I'm talking, you're probably starting to think that I didn't enjoy this album, so let me once again reiterate that THAT IS NOT AT ALL THE CASE.  In fact, as I mentioned before, I kind of loved all 33.7 minutes of it.  It starts out strong, with "Chemicals", a guitar-driven rollicker that sets a strong pace for the record and segues into rowdy standout "Villains", a don't-let-the-bastards-get-you-down "garage-pop anthem" (what their website calls their music) ("Put your hands up if you've ever been knocked down/Never let the villains come and push you around").  And while I could talk about all of the tracks individually, that level of detail is probably unnecessary, since once these guys get in their groove they stay in it, with hard, fast, and catchy guitar riffs and equally good drums and bass.  The album straddles the line between punk and rock 'n' roll expertly, occasionally veering into harder territory ("Bullets"), and occasionally getting softer ("Most Times"), but remaining hooky and accessible no matter what else is going on.  This is the record Green Day really, really wants to make but can't, and although the band is still developing its range, the album fun as hell to listen to.  Especially if you've got the hamsters to play along.