Bands you should be listening to #4: The Velvet Hands




Generally speaking, Cornwall is famous for its stunning coastline, excellent surfing conditions, and of course, it's delightful Cornish pasties. Yet, one thing that Cornwall may not be heavily associated with, is the vibrant music scene which helped young four-piece 'The Velvet Hands' throughout their early years.

On the back of a run supporting VANT at three intimate venues across the west country, the highly regarded garage rock band kindly took some time out of their busy schedules to give us an interesting insight into their busy, yet exciting lives as an up and coming band.

Although now living in London, the lads owe a lot their home county and insist that Cornwall has a really vibrant music scene which inspired them a lot when starting out.

"It's a really close knit scene and everyone is always very positive about each others music which gives you a lot of confidence as a new band."

Moving away from the peacefulness and tranquility of Cornwall to the hustle and bustle of the big city could easily have caused a few issues, however, the four piece surprisingly, and indeed elatedly, found very few problems.

"When moving to London I thought we'd be out on our own but we've made friends with so many bands here. It's kind of terrifying just how much good music is currently being made up and down the country."

Although drawing inspiration from the likes of Babyshambles, Nick Cave and The Cribs, they try and maintain an element of originality in their writing in order to differentiate themselves from bands within a similar genre.

"We never try and purposely write in a style of a band or whatever, it all goes into the melting pot of love that is our songwriting process."

They continued "We like to keep our recordings quite raw, there are lots of mistakes that we kept in on purpose.. promise. Our record is quite lo-fi but we'll push up the production on each release. Expect our 4th record to sound like Aja by Steely Dan."

As well as the three recent gigs supporting VANT in Plymouth, Exeter and Perranporth respectively, The Velvet Hands have also taken their punchy sound and high energy sets on tour with 'Yak'.

"It's always fun to do these mini tours, 3 days of debauchery then back to reality. Last year we did a similar mini tour with Yak which was fun. It's always great to play directly to an audience who like similar music to what you are making."

With airplay support from BBC Introducing London, Radio X, BBC Introducing Cornwall and E4's Made In Chelsea, amongst others, The Velvet Hands are getting the exposure they deserve in the early stages of their career. To add to this, NME described them as 'full of bolshy spirit', and Phill Taggart of BBC R1 stated "I'm really into that, they're making an unholy noise and we like that a lot. Feeling that one”.

The quote that stood out for me, however, was one from 'Gigslutz' which read "We could be witnessing the emergence of another great British band. Jaw droppingly good", which I wholeheartedly agree with.

When questioning them on their plans from the future, the lads stated "We have a new record out next year, which we're really excited to drop. On top of this, we've got a This Feeling tour coming up in either December or January."

"Then, hopefully onwards and upwards. Lots of festivals and more radio play. Ridiculous things always seem to happen to us whenever we play shows so hopefully we'll collect some more stories to tell the grandchildren."

A band very much in the mould of some early 2000's favourites such as The Cribs and The Libertines, The Velvet Hands also show glimpses of The Strokes, amongst other bands. Their punchy, garage-y, punk sound is one which I absolutely love and always enjoy listening to. I firmly believe this band are destined for big things.

I would just like to thank all four members of the band for helping me conduct this piece by answering some questions for me. It's greatly appreciated. Here's to the start of a very successful career.

If you haven't already, go and check them out on Spotify. 'Sick of Living' and 'The End' are personal favourites.

Alternatively, you can find the band on the following social media platforms:

Twitter: @thevelvethands1
Instagram: thevelvethands

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