London quartet My Vitriol take their name from Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock, a fantastic tale of evil, sociology, and moral decay set in wartime England. Greene's anti-hero Pinkie Brown is an impotent yet violent 17-year-old thug, who arms himself with a bottle of sulphuric acid -- his "vitriol" -- which he uses as his defense against his hostile gangland environment.
As with Pinkie's potion, My Vitriol's music is combustible: as wildly cathartic and as emotionally euphoric as an ecstatic dream. With swirling instrumental interludes, instantly catchy refrains, and thought-provoking lyrics, their album Finelines is one of the most powerful debuts in recent memory.
In their brief history, My Vitriol have racked up five British hit singles, gracing the stale mainstream charts with thunderously delivered twisted melodies. Now poised for a US release on Epic, My Vitriol's debut offers the hits -- "Always: Your Way," "Losing Touch," "Cemented Shoes," "Pieces" and "Grounded" among the 16 tracks which made Finelines one of the breakthrough albums of the year in the UK.
"Using only your head and not your heart doesn't appeal to me," says Som Wardner, My Vitriol's Sri Lankan-born songwriter, vocalist and guitarist, about the creative process. "I let whatever is inside come out. Certain songs materialize almost complete. It is like a beautiful channeling that happens sometimes. I just let them write themselves. I find that the ones which really capture an instant, can be related to in such an instant."
Wardner's music is irresistible in its ability to offer both grace-filled solace and head-slamming vitality. "The emotion in our music has always been one of the most important things to us," Wardner says. "The lyrics are all personal, but I like to leave them open to interpretation, sometimes the meanings are obvious, sometimes not. The emotion can come from the atmosphere and the feeling you get from the song. We like to feel some sort of emotional connection in the music we listen to."
With guitarist Seth Taylor, bassist Carolyn Bannister and drummer Ravi Kesavaram, My Vitriol match the power of bands such as Nirvana, Deftones and Smashing Pumpkins with the art song sensibilities of Husker Du, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. My Vitriol's Finelines sounds like a band at the apex of their career, even though this is only the beginning.
Meeting Kesavaram while both were attending the University of London in early 1998, Wardner had already written a handful of tunes (some which appear on Finelines). He and Ravi got together to record the songs for a friend's studio engineering class.
"It was a great opportunity, because we didn't have any money," recalls Kesavaram, "(The engineer's) college had a strict policy against the recordings made there being used in any commercial circumstances. If they had found out that the songs were on national radio, they would have probably kicked him out!"
Pressing the tape, entitled Delusions of Grandeur, into the hands of popular Radio One DJ Steve Lamacq at a local club, Wardner was amazed when the influential DJ soon put their demos into heavy rotation on his nightly radio show, drawing much attention. Even before there was a band, My Vitriol had a hit to contend with.
"It was possibly one of the worst recorded demos I have ever heard." Lamacq notes in his autobiography, Going Deaf for a Living, "The hiss was louder than the guitars, but if you turn the treble down and strained your ears really hard, the songs were ace. To me, the My Vitriol demo was incredibly important. It's a cliche, I know, but one demo like this is enough to fire your enthusiasm up again." He added in his column in the Melody Maker: "The trick is that they sound in one listen like a band you've loved for years."
Wardner recalls: "It all happened incredibly quickly, maybe too quickly. We only had the basic demos but labels were already interested.We were still at college when the songs were on the radio. The car only had two wheels and we wanted to get a whole band together before we did anything else."
The duo completed their studies while searching for the missing pieces of the My Vitriol puzzle. Seth Taylor and fellow college-mate Carolyn Bannister were both discovered more or less by chance performing with other local acts.
According to Taylor: "It was by coincidence that I met Som and Ravi. It was at my previous band Mint 400's farewell show. They were there to see the band on before us, but fortunately they hung around for a few drinks." Wardner recalls that he and Kesavaram were "scalped by what we heard. His sound was exactly what we wanted in the band. I remember thinking that I might have found my (Radiohead guitarist) Jonny Greenwood."
Likewise with Carolyn, London's underground scene offered up the last piece of the jigsaw. "They saw me playing bass in a Soho dive, and we met after the show," says multi-instrumentalist Bannister. "When I heard the demo I was blown away. They had pressed up around 250 CDs, of which only 30 worked. Luckily they gave me one that actually played!"
Call it fate or serendipity, My Vitriol's rise was inevitable. With the line-up realized, the band found themselves signed after only seven shows, and less than a year later they commenced recording of their first album. The finished product, Finelines is an epic and cohesive piece of work that matches soaring choruses with prismatic, dual guitar architectures and textures, and mesmerizing vocals with expansive rhythms. "Alpha Waves" opens with shimmering instrumental tones, seeping into "Always Your Way," a pummeling yet buoyant marvel of infectious choruses and melodic crescendos.
The pensive "Kohlstream" leads to another swaying thundercloud, the flailing, bittersweet "Cemented Shoes." With careening power and surging melodies, the songs roll onward, from the pretty pop of "Grounded" and the ethereal guitar and whispered poetry of "Infantile," to the dark, schizophrenic melancholy of "Tongue Tied" and the transcendent tumult of "Losing Touch." Finelines closes with the stained-glass reverie of "Under The Wheels," a beautiful reflection which completes a dazzling debut.
Now with a full album in the can, songs on UK airwaves, and a US release imminent, what is My Vitriol's plan for the future? "There are bands that want to be the biggest band in the world at any cost, but that doesn't interest us," Wardner says. "We just want to make music we can appreciate. Ironically, a lot of times you are writing music because there is not enough out there with the soul and substance to inspire you. Ultimately, you make it for yourself. The music always comes first. Inherently, people you love will let you down. Music you love will never let you down."
