The March Violets – Made Glorious (Self-Released, 2013)

And so it’s finally out, well, almost. Made Glorious is one of those things that makes you proud to have been involved in a DIY fund raising issue through Pledge Music that began something crazy like two years ago.

I’ll be the first to admit to some hesitation after the Trinity EP (self-released, 2007) failed to light my fire, but hey, what’s a few dollars towards helping a genuinely alternative band you really like in an age when record companies are much more interested in instantaneous shallow pap like Niki Minaj, Nickelback or that Beiber thing?

Happily, what we have here is indeed glorious; a massive 16 track double album, including largely new versions of the album preview if you will, the Love will Kill You EP (self-released, 2011) and a whole heap of new goodies.

This is quite clearly The March Violets of old, and yet they have unsurprisingly subtly grown over the intervening years. Part of this is undoubtedly down to advances in technology allowing for vastly superior production, but also, the material presented here with more varied instrumentation is somehow more multi-textured than what folks who came to know and love the Violets from the Botanic Verses compilation (Jungle, 1993) may be used to.

There’s no filler here, all is wonderfully catchy from the title track “Made Glorious”, “We are all Gods III”, “Tokyo Flow”, “Dress 4 U” and of course, the unspeakably brilliant “Road of Bones”. Other tracks like “Billion 3”, “London’s Drowning” and “2024” come bearing political subtexts which could have been annoying had they been delivered in an in-your-face style like anarcho punk bands, say, Crass for example, but are actually pleasingly subtle. 

They’ve lost none of their humour either, which is very welcome in a genre where many bands are so tediously po-faced. It’s easy to imagine the serial killer ode “Of Roses” playing as the final titles roll on a particularly black comedy, and the rollicking “Ramming Speed” jogs merrily along in a vein not unlike what one might expect from Andy Prieboy. There’s a moment when things go weirdly electro, but the punch line quickly becomes apparent when the track listing reveals the song to be “Discoboy Must Die”.

At time of writing, Made Glorious has only been made available to those who pledged.  Very soon however,  it will be available by mail order, initially in a strictly limited 2 CD edition, albeit with different cover art than that shown above.

The Violets have requested that none of the pledgers upload or distribute their advance copies of Made Glorious, and from what I can see on Youtube, so far everyone has very graciously complied with the request. Just to give you a small taste of what you’re in for however, here’s two little snippets.

 We are all Gods (Live in Glasgow 2012, presumably a bootleg, but a very good one) 

Dandelion King

Buy this – you won’t regret a cent.

Track Listing:

1.    Made Glorious

2.    Billion3

3.    A Room With No View

4.    Of Roses

5.    Tokyo Flow

6.    Ramming Speed

7.    Little Punk Thing

8.    Dandelion King

9.    2024

10. London’s Drowning

11. We are all Gods

12. Road of Bones

13. Discoboy Must Die

14. Dress 4 U

15. Bottle of Poison

16. My Demons

Line Up: Si Denbigh (vocals), Rosie Garland (vocals), Tom Ashton (guitar), Jo Violet (bass).

http://www.marchviolets.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/TheMarchViolets?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/groups/363327265608/?fref=ts

MIND THE GAP!!!