A
boy and girl
duo from Brighton. A
cool girl playing guitar
. A
good guy playing drums
.
Kicking garage rock.
A new album. A European tour. Blood Red Shoes present their second album on the A38. Herky-jerky blasts of
distortion
and
drums
, sparkling and
fuzzy guitar riffs
,
The White Stripes
- and
Yeah Yeah Yeahs-influenced post-punk-rock
hybrid and and epic concert!
When a band releases a
self-titled album
, it usually means one of two things: they feel like they’ve made their defining statement, or they ran out of ideas for album titles. For Blood Red Shoes, it’s happily
the former
. “I feel like this is
the strongest thing
we’ve ever done,” says Steven Ansell, drummer. “It’s the
most honest fucking record
we’ve ever made. It’s us completely naked.”
‘Blood Red Shoes’ is the band’s fourth album, but the first one they’ve self-produced, having previously worked extensively with Arctic Monkeys producer
Mike Crossey
(even if Ansell describes using him as a “hotline for when I messed stuff up in ProTools” during the making of this). It marks a shift not only in method, but in location, too: the album was recorded in
Berlin
. “We wanted to get out of England and write somewhere different,” says Ansell. “We settled on Berlin because it’s cheap, convenient and super easy to get a space to record. And loads of cool records have been made there.”
Despite their nod to the city’s musical history, Brighton/London-based Blood Red Shoes did not set out to ape Bowie’s Berlin period. Instead, they focussed on
stripping away
the pristine surface of 2012’s third album ‘In Time To Voices’ to return to the
raw, rock ‘n’ roll grit
at the centre. “Everything was so perfect on our third album, but we realised that the imperfections are what makes our band – that’s what people like about us,” says singer/guitarist Laura Mary Carter. It’s a plan that was solidified on a tour of the USA in April 2013, which interrupted the album’s writing and recording.
“That tour did something to us,” says Ansell. “In most towns outside the major cities, we were really stoked if we got 50 people out. You’re playing this close to someone, no lights or big PAs, no tricks, no big production, nothing to hide behind. It’s just the absolute b
are essences of whether you can excite someone by just rocking out
. Doing that night after night in the States, we realised that you have to connect to someone just by the
sheer energy
of what you do, not worrying about singing perfect harmonies. We got back to Berlin and thought, let’s just
The
most important thing
, for Carter and Ansell, is that they’ve
rediscovered the passion at their core
. “You know like what it felt like when you’re a kid in art class and the teacher goes out and you just throw the paint around?” asks Ansell. “That’s the feeling of freedom that I can hear in the record. It’s really sloppy, and I love that about it."
