Victoria’s Blue Violets draw comparisons to Concrete Blonde’s Johnette on self-titled debut

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 14, 2009

By Steve Newton

On their MySpace page the Blue Violets’ sound is described as “psychedelic/surf/rock”, but the opening song on the band’s self-titled debut album brings to mind nothing as much as L.A. alt-rockers Concrete Blonde.

On “You Said”, lead singer Coral Osborne’s husky vocals make the comparison obvious—though not to Osborne, who was still in diapers when Concrete Blonde hit it big with 1990’s Bloodletting. She didn’t even know who Johnette Napolitano was until her father, 54-40 frontman Neil Osborne, noted the resemblance himself.

“One day I was driving around with my pop and ‘Joey’ came on,” explains Osborne from the Victoria office of concert promoter Atomic Productions, where she works. “He was like, ‘Hey, this is what you sound like!’ and I went, ‘What?’ I mean, she’s got a crazier voice than I do, but yeah, I guess it’s reminiscent of that.”

The 20-year-old Osborne and her sister Kandle, who just turned 19, wrote all 12 of the songs on The Blue Violets themselves before hooking up with the third member of the group, former Lillix bassist-vocalist Louise Burns, a grizzled music vet of 23.

The Osbornes began making music together about five years ago when they moved with their family to Shawnigan Lake, a village on Vancouver Island with a population of about 4,000.

“Kandle had just started playing guitar,” recalls Coral, “and we had nothing else to do because we lived out in the middle of nowhere, so we just started writing crappy songs together and then eventually we progressed into half-decent-sounding ones.”

Kandle Osborne’s tasty, economical guitar work weaves a haunting spell on ethereal pop-noir tracks like “Anorexic” and “Diet”, which, despite their titles, don’t hinge on an obsession with female body issues.

“Being young females, of course we overanalyze our figures and all that,” relates Coral, “but those are kind of metaphorical songs. ‘Diet’ is just about when you first fall in love at a young age and you really cannot eat anything and your whole mind is just consumed with thoughts.”

All the music on the CD, apart from the rhythm tracks, was recorded at The Basement—as in the basement studio of the Osbornes’ parents’ house in Victoria. Papa Neil handled the role of producer but didn’t impose his musical ideals on his offspring.

“He’s not a stage dad in any respect,” explains Coral, whose band opens for 54-40 at the Commodore on Friday and Saturday (October 16 and 17). “This is something we wanted to do. I often grill him for his opinion on things, like ‘Help us! Give us more direction!’, but he just wanted us to find it for ourselves, which is why it took a year and a half all in all.

“But that’s something that I really admired about him,” she continues, “that he didn’t pressure us to go in any direction. He didn’t cowrite anything; he didn’t come in and try to rearrange any songs or tell us certain lyrics are inappropriate or anything. He just let our creative juices flow.”

Over the years Coral Osborne has developed an appreciation for her father’s music—she’s particularly fond of lesser-known 54-40 tunes such as “Broken Pieces”, “Stormy”, and “Friends End”—but when she was little she didn’t spend much time on the playground bragging about his rocking accomplishments.

“I didn’t really grasp the concept of my dad being a well-known Canadian musician,” she recalls. “I remember when I’d go to birthday parties when I was younger and I’d have to find a gift for my friend and my mom would be like, ‘Oh, take one of your dad’s CDs.’ And I’d be like, ‘No, I can’t do that, I gotta take a Salt-N-Pepa CD!’ ”

As leader of 54-40, Neil Osborne managed to build a successful and rewarding career that has spanned nearly three decades. But his eldest daughter has no illusions about what it takes to make that happen.

“As much as my dad and I have this debate,” she says, “it’s not all work—it is luck and it is chance, and working on the industry side of things I can see that on a daily basis. In this day and age we’re so oversaturated in bands, musicians, and creativity—which is great—but it really is ‘the right place at the right time’.

“With our dad being who he is we are given a certain advantage, of course, but I want to play a fair game, you know, and I feel like we still have a lot to accumulate and a lot of work to do.”