LANY tourmates Transviolet deliver glistening pop on “Close”
Los Angeles-based quartet Transviolet have had a better 2016 than most; touring the United States with electro-pop outfit LANY and performing sets at both Reading and Leeds Festivals.
Their celebrity fans include Katy Perry, Harry Styles, Ellie Goulding, and Twin Shadow - pretty impressive for a band whose first EP was released little over a year ago.
To top off 2016, Transviolet share their new single “Close”, a slick scoop of glittering electro-pop framing lead singer Sarah McTaggart’s yearning vocal. Following in the footsteps of their previous releases is no mean feat - Transviolet have garnered praise from Hilly Dilly and Noisey, peaked in the Top 15 on Spotify’s Global Viral Charts, and - in the case of “Bloodstream” - been premiered by Sane Lowe on his Beats 1 show. “Close” is a laid-back pop track, its musical sweetness tempered by lyrical longing, that more than lives up to the hype.
Over email, McTaggart explains more about the band’s genesis, and how the name Transviolet came to be. "We were sitting around the living room with books on mythology and poetry one day, determined to pick a band name - as this had been no easy task for us. Judah [McCarthy] came across this poem by Charles Bukowski called “When The Violets Roar At The Sun”. It goes, “They've got us in a cage, ruined of grace and senses, and the heart roars like a lion at what they've done to us.” It spoke to me so plainly about how we felt about the world, how our own apathy has led us to this haphazard way of existing - devoid of reason or purpose, just fumbling around the streets with our heads in our phones, passively falling into the future without any real stake in it. We want to be active in designing our future. We believe that our generation can learn to live mindfully, and peacefully and evolve, thus trans-, as in short for transcendence. To sum it up, Transviolet is transcendence into a new, violet awareness. We loved that idea, so it stuck."
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