Isn’t it funny when you have enough distance to look back and realize there was one
accidental meeting, one look exchanged, one conversation shared which set in motion a
chain of events that changed your life forever? It’s hardly a revelatory sentence—after all,
whole films, artworks and albums have crystallized these kinds of coincidences and their
knock-on effects. Transviolet’s forthcoming full length is not one of those records, but the
sequence of events that brought them to the point of a) creating a collection of songs
together and b) for those songs to then be released, can be attributed to talent and
chemistry, sure, but some divine happenstance too.
For instance, several years ago Transviolet singer Sarah McTaggart’s mom was seated next to
a celebrity hairdresser on a flight. The pair got talking and being the proud parent, Sarah’s
mom ended up bending his ear about her daughter’s band. When she hopped off the flight
she insisted Sarah reach out to him via Twitter. “I was like, stop bothering this poor man, he
was nice enough to talk to you on the plane, I don’t think he really wants to hear our music!”
Sarah laughs. “But she kept asking until I finally sent him some of our stuff.” And you can bet
he liked what he heard—so much so in fact, that when dining with a record exec friend later
that week, said hairdresser mentioned Transviolet. After one listen the exec was hooked,
insisting that they speak with Sarah that very night.
“They called me at 10.30 PM and I was in my PJs and I thought someone was pranking me
because the guy on the other line was like, ‘We want to sign you, we want to do a showcase,”
she recalls, still somewhat incredulous. “I got off the phone stunned. It was super freaking
crazy: they called that night and we were signed and moving to LA a month later.” All
because someone chose an aisle seat (probably).
But this wasn’t the only moment that a twist of chance altered the course their path: their
origin story is equally serendipitous. Thanks to her father’s job as an entrepreneur, Sarah’s
family lead a nomadic existence. She spent her childhood bouncing from place to place
before settling in Grand Cayman, where her father’s family hailed from originally. A Caribbean
island surrounded by crystal cerulean water sounds like paradise, but removed from her
friends and the “normal” high school existence, Sarah felt isolated. Although she arrived late
to artists like The Beatles, Nirvana, Bob Dylan and Radiohead—“those timeless songwriters
whose music really seems to transcend time and space”—it was at this point in her life that
these artists really resonated.
“I clung to that kind of music because I moved around a lot as a kid and didn’t really fit in or
I got sick of trying to fit in,” she explains. “So I’d escape by listening to songs like ‘Across the
Universe’ or ‘Lithium’ or ‘Creep’—these artists, they get me. I became obsessed with lyrics and
songwriting and that’s when I knew it was what I wanted to do.”
It was around this time that Sarah picked up the guitar. She cut her teeth playing open mic
nights on the island, eventually uploading her material to a site designed to bring musicians
together. And here’s where the other random split second decision triggered a crucial set of
events: instead of listing her whereabouts as the Caymans, Sarah wrote San Diego on her
profile. She’d set her sights on the SoCal city and it turned out to be something of selffulfilling prophecy because when multi-instrumentalist Michael Panek logged on to search for
a female vocalist, he narrowed his search to his area in—you guessed it—San Diego. A sucker
for “90s jams” there was something in Sarah’s songs that appealed to this leaning. “Her lyrical
style reminded me of Death Cab For Cutie,” explains the Rochester, NY native. But more than
that it was her innate sense of melody that reeled him in.
“There’s a lot of good singers out there who can write crappy lyrics and get by,” he explains.
“But there was something about her that had substance, it was a real visceral connection.”
Despite the fact that Sarah immediately admitted she wasn’t based in San Diego, the pair
quickly forged a musical partnership: Michael would email his music and Sarah would apply
her words and melodies. She introduced him to Alt-J; he played her Sigur Ros. This was at the
top of 2011 and by the end of it she’d uprooted her life and moved to San Diego. Was it a
shock to meet each other in person for the first time after the intimacy of long distance
songwriting?
“Luckily in those emails we were both pretty honest about who we were,” says Michael. “She
was exactly who I thought she was going to be—except she was a lot shorter. I think the first
thing I said to her when I hugged her was like, ‘Oh you’re so small!’”
It wasn’t long after the airplane-Twitter-phone call exchange that the duo upped sticks and
moved to LA. Once there, Transviolet truly solidified thanks to the addition of Michael’s high
school buddies and former bandmates, drummer Jonathan Garcia and guitarist Judah
McCarthy. What followed was an incredibly fertile period: they signed to Epic and penned
some 60-odd songs which were eventually whittled to a svelte debut album scheduled to
drop next year.
But it was the quartet’s first song, which they popped online in the summer of 2015, that
announced Transviolet’s arrival and really whet appetites for more. “Girls Your Age” is a
bewitching slip of a song with Sarah’s voice at once recalling the Lana, Lorde and Imogen
Heap: sultry, measured, assured. The song gained instant online traction. People clicked play
and clicked play again. Katy Perry praised the lyrics, Harry Styles tweeted his support, Ellie
Goulding selected it for a spin on Beats1 and Twin Shadow delivered an exclusive remix. “Girls
Your Age” soon became a bonafide viral sensation with over a million plays on Spotify alone.
Unflinchingly personal, it was also an apt introduction to the band. “It was my coming of age
story, I wanted to put something out there that was raw, it wasn’t trying to be anything, it
was just a true account of how I felt growing up and the turmoil that surrounded that,” states
Sarah. “You’re trying to figure out who you are and at the same time the world is telling you
feel this and be that and want this and you’re caught in the crossfire.”
Their four song eponymous EP (released this past September) further underscores what’s in
store. “Bloodstream” is a straight up toxic love tune, while “Night Vision” expresses the flip of
this. Elsewhere “New Bohemia” is unabashedly anthemic, but the lyrics are anything but
throwaway. “I feel like every individual has the power to change the world, we decide on a
daily basis what our world looks like and every decision we make effects our reality,” explains
Sarah of the song’s message. “I wanted to write a song that inspired people to speak up and
take action and to take responsibility for our generation and take a stand for something that
you believe in.”
“For all of us it’s more than just the music,” Michael concurs. “We think it’s important to
spread positive messages and have a nice effect on the world around us.” While Michael
describes Sarah and him as yin and yang—her lyrics and melodies, his beats and
arrangements—the addition of John and Judah should also not be underestimated. Sarah
credits them as being essential to the development of their sound, which they’re now honing
live on their first ever tour (they made their stage debut back in September 2015). The
foursome are a tight unit and it works. “There are no divas, we all look at each other as
equals and there’s no such thing as stupid ideas,” affirms Sarah. “I think that safety is what
allows us to feel so free in the writing process because no matter what, the other three
people are always going to back you up. Those stupid ideas are what sometimes lead to the
brilliant ideas.”
Fate may have leant a helping hand, but Transviolet don’t need luck to take this to the next
level.