BLOOD RED SHOES – Blood Red Shoes
01. Welcome Home
02. Everything All At Once
03. An Animal
04. Grey Smoke
05. Far Away
06. The Perfect Mess
07. Behind a Wall
08. Stranger
09. Speech Coma
10. Don’t Get Caught
11. Cigarettes In the Dark
12. Tightwire
The Rock’nRoll-Twopiece – in general – is hard to perform. Specially when represented by a couple of heteronomous sex, it longs for presence and aura either extraordinary cool or surpassingly sweet. In these days of boredom and plain depression BLOOD RED SHOES release their, so far, fourth (!) album with its eponymous title – Blood Red Shoes. I’m sorry: to feel nothing at all.
As anyone could have imagined, the duo from Brighton packed their ‘stuff, got in a van and drove to Berlin,’ as one of them says. Here, in the towns by now bourgeois Kreuzberg they rented some kind of: what else, ‘Space,’ to shred on their instruments and feel this funky citys vibe. And indeed: you might rather imagine singer Steve Ansell wear a Cinderella dress at a manga-themed party midst totally drunk indie-fans from any random Universität (Berlin!) stuck in delirium, than see him shoot Heroin like a libertine on a shitty bars toilet in Hamburg.
I remember BLOOD RED SHOES play a venue there sold out by about 200 people some years ago. It was a great show, honestly. Tiny, shabby club, drunk people, great amounts of beer floating like wine, fun, but harmlos. The bands trick was easy to figure out. A sense of youthful aggression, fuzzed up amps, tight shaking drum-kit. A garage band playing catchy tunes to freak out to and: unarguably cute Laura Mary Carter. Sweat and lust, lollipop lipstick, Lolita. All: Guilty pleasure. But as it goes pretty girls make graves, so you could have listened to their first record Box of Secrets and thought: ‘This is not the Pandora – down another beer then.’
Here and now, 2014, the band releases statements like: ‘This time it’s about being hedonistic and free and not worrying so much’ (again: Berlin!?). The new record is seen as a shift in perspective, which, supposedly, now, is set to be positive. But: When Everything All At Once, as an example of choice, comes from ‘the idea that you might not even wake up tomorrow, so you might as well experience everything right fucking now’ (fucking!!!). I am kind of not really capable of relating to the thought. Thinking of maybe not waking up tomorrow and describing it as being a positive perspective, for me, represents a slight disposition. Maybe this explains my tendency for addiction or holding on to things emotionally for too long, but still: No, Nothing.
BLOOD RED SHOES with ‘Blood Red Shoes’ lean towards American Stoner-Sound and try to a keep a british accent (see: ARCTIC MONKEYS). They rock well.
NBHAP Rating: 1,5/5
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