London's Palma Violets draw equally from punk, garage rock, and psych. The lineup comprises bassist/vocalist Chilli Jenson, guitarist/vocalist Sam Fryer, keyboardist Peter Mayhew, and drummer Will Doyle. A random encounter at the 2010 Reading Festival brought school friends Fryer, Mayhew, and Doyle together with Jenson; disillusioned by the scarcity of visceral, emotionally direct music, the four decided to start a band. Momentum gathered in 2012 during their stay at Studio 180, a low-rent former house in Lambeth, London, that had become a gathering point for painters, photographers, and other artists. The environment let Palma Violets shape their sound among sympathetic peers and granted them unrestricted space to develop material. The makeshift rehearsals and growing crowds at their humid Lambeth shows generated enough excitement to draw the attention of major-label A&R representatives. After competing offers, the group chose Rough Trade. Their debut release, the late-2012 single "Best of Friends," was later ranked by NME as the year's top track and earned a 2014 Ivor Novello Award nomination. Anticipation peaked with the early-2013 arrival of the Steve Mackey–produced debut album 180. Following an extended tour, the band withdrew to a Welsh farm to compose new material. For the sessions they enlisted John Leckie, whose résumé includes Radiohead and the Stone Roses, marking his first rock production in eight years. The resulting Danger in the Club appeared in May 2015.
