Blood Red Shoes – Blood Red Shoes

Blood Red Shoes
Blood Red Shoes
Jazz Life
★★★

Blood Red Shoes are a strange batch to nail down. It’s not quite fully immersed in the garage rock cliche, and it’s not embraced in the dream pop grouping. But to have both of those on their side is what makes this self-titled album intriguing.

“Tell me who you are…,” “Behind A Wall” greatly sums up this band.The works of Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell bounce around glorious harmonies all overstepping power rock to the nth power. A song like this and you feel like you could jump right into outer space and rock out into infinity. The rhythm is punchier than any shoegaze construction, but the premise is ever so cosmic.

This is the first album (their fourth total) that they went out on their own and made a self-produced release. The results you will find favorable. In fact, what you may find so charming on this album are its blemishes. They may not be apparent, but it builds character to a kind of album so many try too hard to create and fail.

Blood Red Shoes – Concert – Lowlands 2014

With that and a fist to the sky saying “Oh yeah!” you get a new and enlightened Blood Red Shoes. The positive demeanor may not be the norm for this band, but it makes for a really fun listen.

“An Animal” plows through with aggro-grit rock while “Far Away” builds a late ‘60s folk-psych rock dreamscape that gives their voices a much needed pedestal to sit on. They create a mysterious place you want to travel to over and over again.

I cannot decide which I like better: the dreamy place to hide or the back alley New York thunderstrip if you were drag racing with Thurston Moore. It’s those non-traditional time signatures from songs like “Don’t Get Caught” that make the heart race. However, the strung out power chords and Carter’s voice’s dominance on “Cigarettes in the Dark” has us spinning around as if Garbage was a metal band. It’s exuberance is catchy.

We have a lot to learn from this album. As musicians, the art of blending has been perfected by Blood Red Shoes. As listeners, the need for anticipation is all you need to want an album of this caliber.