Violet Grohl: Liverpool Meets The Girl Behind The Famous Name – Jacaranda Baltic
Jacaranda Baltic, Liverpool – 3rd October 2026
WORDS HARRY K / IMAGES @imposterwithacamera
The Surname Gets You In. The Songs Have To Keep You There
There are two ways to walk into a room when your surname is Grohl. You can walk in carrying it like a crown, or you can walk in carrying it like a fucking anvil. Violet Grohl chose neither. She walked into the Jacaranda Baltic in Liverpool on Saturday night dressed in black, looking almost disarmingly understated, and proceeded to spend the next hour or so doing something considerably more interesting than proving she was Dave Grohl's daughter. She played.
That's it. No circus, no gigantic production, no attempt to recreate the Foo Fighters experience in a room the size of a decent living room. Just Violet, a full band, some guitars, some songs and a crowd that had clearly come along wanting to find out whether there was actually something here beyond the family tree. The answer, increasingly, is yes.
The Jacaranda had the atmosphere of one of those rooms where something could either catch fire or fall flat on its face. Thankfully, Violet and her band found the fire. This was part of her Be Sweet To Me tour, but it never felt like a simple exercise in dragging the debut album around the country and playing it from beginning to end. Instead, the songs were given room to breathe, stripped back and toned down without ever losing their teeth.
And that was the first thing that struck me.
The band were there in full force, but this wasn't a full-volume assault. There was no desperate attempt to blow the roof off. The guitars were allowed to sit inside the songs rather than dominate them, the drums were tight and controlled, and there was a looseness to the whole performance that made the material feel considerably more vulnerable than it does on record.
Violet herself walked onto the stage in a simple black dress and immediately looked like she understood the room. There was no overblown rock-star posing, no desperate attempts to win Liverpool over with the usual clichés. No endless "Liverpool, make some fucking noise!" routine. Thank Christ. She mostly let the music do the talking.
And the music is where the real argument begins.
Be Sweet To Me wears its influences openly. You can hear the DNA of '90s alternative rock running through it, from grunge to the dirtier end of the female-fronted guitar bands of that era. There are moments that bring to mind Hole, L7, Veruca Salt and the broader alternative-rock explosion that turned distortion into a language all of its own.
But live, those influences seemed less important.
“595” had a darker, dirtier edge than on record, while “Cool Buzz” carried the sort of hook that burrows into your head whether you want it there or not. “THUM” was another highlight, the band holding back just enough to let the tension build before letting the guitars bite.
That's the interesting thing about Violet tonight.
Restraint becomes her weapon.
For somebody this young, she doesn't seem particularly interested in filling every available second. There are pauses. There is space. There are moments when she simply stands there with the microphone and allows the audience to come to her rather than the other way around.
That makes you watch her.
And when she sings, there's nowhere for her to hide.
Her voice isn't some polished, studio-engineered thing that has been sanded smooth until every rough edge has disappeared. There's grit there, and vulnerability, and occasionally something that sounds like it might crack before she pulls it back together.
Those moments are when Violet becomes most interesting.
Of course, there is still an elephant in the room, and it's impossible to pretend otherwise. Her surname is Grohl. Her father is one of the most recognisable figures in modern rock. The internet has already spent an unhealthy amount of time debating whether she would be standing on this stage if her surname was Smith rather than Grohl.
Maybe she wouldn't.
But standing in the Jacaranda tonight, that wasn't the question I found myself asking.
The question was whether she could make me forget about the surname once the music started.
For stretches of this show, she absolutely did.
There are moments when the room stops being full of people watching Dave Grohl's daughter and becomes a room full of people watching Violet Grohl. That's an important distinction, because ultimately a famous surname can open a lot of doors, but it can't make an audience give a shit once you're standing in front of them.
Only the songs can do that.
And Violet has songs.
The unreleased material was particularly revealing. Without polished studio versions sitting in your head, these songs felt like living things. Rough around the edges, still developing, still capable of changing. Some sounded like they were already heading towards something substantial; others felt more like sketches waiting for the final pieces to fall into place.
Personally, I'd rather hear that than something polished to death.
Rock music was never supposed to arrive gift-wrapped.
The great thing about watching an artist this early in their career is that you can still see the joins. You can hear the influences. You can see the moments where they're trying something and perhaps haven't quite figured out how to land it yet. You can hear the mistakes and the discoveries.
And Violet is still discovering herself.
There are moments where the blueprint is more obvious than the building. Some of the songs still wear their influences a little too proudly. But then she'll hit a vocal line, or the guitars will suddenly drop away, or the band will lock into something unexpectedly powerful, and for a few seconds the influences disappear.
That's Violet.
That's the bit worth following.
The full band deserve credit because they never tried to overpower her. They created the muscle without stealing the spotlight, knowing when to push and, more importantly, when to pull back. The result was a performance that felt much more intimate than the size of the band suggested.
There were moments when the Jacaranda seemed almost completely still, the audience hanging on to the quieter passages before the guitars kicked back in. Then the room would move again.
That push and pull gave the show its character.
It wasn't flawless.
Good.
It shouldn't be.
Violet is still learning how to inhabit a stage like this. Her relationship with the audience isn't completely formed yet, and there are moments where you can almost see her working out what comes next. But that is infinitely more interesting than watching somebody who has already figured out every trick in the book.
She's twenty.
She's allowed to be unfinished.
In fact, I'd be worried if she wasn't.
What she already possesses, though, is something that can't easily be taught. She believes in the songs. You can see it in the way she sings them and in the way the quieter moments suddenly become the most powerful parts of the set.
By the final stretch of the night, the Grohl surname had become almost irrelevant.
There was just a young woman in a black dress standing in a Liverpool club, singing songs she had written and songs that are still finding their shape, backed by a band that understood that sometimes the loudest thing you can do is shut the fuck up for a second.
I looked around the room and realised nobody seemed particularly interested in who her father was anymore.
They were listening.
And that's the moment Violet Grohl needs to remember.
The surname might get you through the door. It might get you the record deal, the festival slot and the first headline. It might get people curious enough to buy a ticket.
But it can't make a room full of strangers shut up and listen.
Only the music can do that.
And tonight, in the sweaty little guts of the Jacaranda Baltic, Violet Grohl had them listening.
Not because she was Dave Grohl's daughter. Not because she was some industry curiosity. Not because she was another name in the endless celebrity-offspring debate.
Because, slowly and unmistakably, she is becoming Violet Grohl.
And that is a much more interesting story.
The surname got her through the door.
Liverpool stayed for the music.
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