Blood Red Shoes have been hiding in plain sight. Since 2005, the Brighton-based duo of drummer Steve Ansell and guitarist Laura-Mary Carter have released a handful of singles and one album, 2008's Box of Secrets, on major label V2. They've toured extensively at home, throughout the EU, and been billed at festivals from ATP to Pukkelpop.
They mostly forgot about the United States, though. While their post-punk peers and countrymen-- Foals, Arctic Monkeys-- have made frequent sojourns to American shores, Ansell and Carter have, for whatever reason, kept primarily in Europe. The band's first wide stateside exposure has come only recently, via the soundtrack to the Michael Cera flick Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which includes their song "It's Getting Boring By the Sea". It's too bad it took so long. Blood Red Shoes are an excellent riffs-and-rhythm rock band-- they make classic bash-and-scrape music with a debt to 1990s-era heroes Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu, and Nirvana.
Now word is starting to get around a little more. This fall Blood Red Shoes completed one blink-and-you'll-miss-it U.S. tour, and the band's sophomore effort, Fire Like This, has gotten a worldwide release, though it's iTunes-only in North America. It's as good an introduction to the band as any-- Blood Red Shoes haven't altered their sound too much over the years. But Ansell and Carter are clever enough shuffle the familiar elements around. Album opener "Don't Ask" hands over the chorus immediately, then falls back to a stop-start verse. They use the same trick on "Keeping It Close"-- seizing attention with the hookiest, highest volume riff.
Ansell and Carter are relatively young-- 24 and 22 respectively-- but they've been around long enough to know how to avoid clichés. Ansell in particular is an old hand. He was a founding member of post-punk outfit Projections and emotional noisemakers Cat on Form, who released a few records on Southern. Both sing here, but Ansell gets most of the good lines. He has a bratty but melodic delivery that keeps the stripped-down verses chugging. Carter isn't bad, either, but she's too often stuck on ballad duty. The best moments come when they play off of one another-- trading off lines and alternating back-up duties, like the interplay on "One More Empty Chair".
On Box of Secrets, the pair limited their arrangements to herky-jerky blasts of distortion and drums. On Fire Like This, Blood Red Shoes favor slow builds-- stretching out repetitions for big, noisy crescendos. Those hands-in-the-air moments are not always within their grasp, however. Carter's "When We Wake" gets tedious during the three-minute climb toward its inevitable fuzz-box stomp. But "Colours Fade" unfolds into head-banging abandon. In its best moments, Fire Like This strikes a balance between heartfelt and heavy. Blood Red Shoes may be squat-hall sized, but they are arena-equipped.
