Good Weather For Airstrikes

I’ve been having a love affair with The Long Blondes since Springtime. They’ll have multiple tracks on my year-end best of list, with at least one breaking the top ten. They’re easily my favorite new band of 2006 after Guillemots. The thought of their debut album, of which there are still no official details, more or less makes me squirm in my seat with anticipation. Yet, this is the first you’ve heard of them in this space (though they’ve been covered extensively everywhere else you look). I guess I’ve just been waiting for the right angle and entry point with which to start my coverage of The Long Blondes, but unfortunately none ever really presented itself, and I’ve just about reached the breaking point, so here begins our far-too-extensive coverage of the group.
I first heard of The Long Blondes on Rough Trade Shops’ Counter Culture ‘05 compilation early this year, when “Lust In The Movies” burst through my speakers with that unbelievably addictive “Edie Sedgwick! Anna Karina!” chorus, and those spiky guitars and thumping basslines sealed the deal, rocketing the Blondes to the top of my HolyShitFindMoreFromThisBandNow list. Further investigation put singles “Appropriation (By Any Other Name)” and “Separated By Motorways” in heavy rotation on my iPod, and shortly thereafter the “Weekend Without Makeup” single dropped, and well, the rest is history. On the topic of that last single, I’ll be saving discussion of the b-side, “Fulwood Babylon”, for my single review of the track, as it would just be downright unfair to the rest of the band’s ouvre to spend this introductory to the band gushing over one (albeit, immaculate) track when the rest of their library is so incredibly strong as well.

While the previous singles served to further pique my interest in the band, it wasn’t until “Weekend Without Makeup” that they reached the same plateau established on “Lust In The Movies”, which outside of its inclusion on that Rough Trade can also be found as the b-side (upstagery!) to their initial “Appropriation” single. “Weekend” finds the Long Blondes at their best; clever narratives obscuring dark undertones, that galloping rhythm section and a chorus with more punch than your high school prom. The track also finds the Sheffield five piece (of which no member is either blonde, nor terribly long) evoking memories of the blue collar grit and glamour of Pulp, fitting considering long-time Pulp bassist Steve Mackey handles production duties on the track. Additionally, Mackey has been announced as the producer for the group’s debut, of which their have been no details announced aside from the fact that Mackey will be producing and they’ll be heading into the studio in the near, if not immediate future. Go ahead and download the two tracks we’ve discussed so far while you catch you’re breath, I’m still not done.

MP3s:
“Lust In The Movies” - The Long Blondes ((highly recommended))
“Weekend Without Makeup” - The Long Blondes ((highly recommended))

I should stop writing now and just hit you with the goods before you all lose interest and just “Page Down” until you hit the rest of the mp3s, but I haven’t even gotten started yet (I mean, I told you before, this has been building up for a long time). Lead singer Kate Jackson, or indie crush of the year as I should probably call her, proves to be the perfect frontwoman for the group, as it’s her dynamic and deliverance that truly takes these tracks to the next level. The Blondes’ songs find Jackson juggling different female archetypes from track to track, and its her ability to write from these ever-changing perspectives that makes her narratives so enjoyable and refreshing to listen to. Whether she’s the helpless admirer (”Lust In The Movies”, “Autonomy Boy”), jealous or cast-aside lover (”Weekend”, “Giddy Stratospheres”, “You Could Have Both”), unattainable vixen (”Madame Ray”, “Fulwood Babylon”), or general guardian and bestower of cautionary advice (”Once & Never Again”, ), Jackson manages to consistently keep her lyrics fresh and we never find her repeatedly coming back to a narrative crutch, a truly admirable quality in today’s overly-recyclable music scene. The Long Blondes have also opened my eyes to how much I fucking love spoken word bridges and in the few songs where they pop up they serve to perfectly compliment Jackson’s , been-around-the-block delivery, succeeding despite the inherent nature of such a lyrical device to scream “pretense!”.

MP3s:
“You Could Have Both” (Demo) - The Long Blondes
“Giddy Stratospheres” - The Long Blondes

By this point my fingers are bleeding and I’m starting to cramp up, but I absolutely can’t depart before first pointing you in the direction of Dreams of Horses who have made the interminable wait for the group’s debut a little bit more manageable by making six of the album’s demos available for download here. I jacked “You Could Have Both” (re-uploaded on my own hosting for bandwith-courtesy purposes, put the guns down) for the purpose of illustrating my spoken word bridges point, but outside of that “Madame Ray” and “A Knife For The Girls” are top notch as well. Again, grab those here and be sure to thank them while you’re there. Additionally, a search for the Long Blondes in the US iTunes store will yield no actual music (because, naturally, US iTunes sucks), but will turn up a 20-minute podcast that sees the band discussing their histoy, influences, and introducing their favorite tracks that’s definitely worth a download and a listen. Finally, I leave you with the demo version of “Once & Never Again”, which has just been announced as the band’s next single and is due out October 3rd on Rough Trade, with whom the band just inked a deal this summer.

MP3: “Once & Never Again” (Demo) - The Long Blondes

So last time we did this whole mega-profile thing, when we first flipped our collective shit for Guillemots last January, we took some heat for the amount of tracks we posted. It was a confusing situation, as the group had only a small amount of released material at the time and there’s a bit of a grey area when it comes to abiding by the generally-accepted “post no more than two songs from an album” rule when a band has no album and just an excess of demos and b-sides in its stead. Granted, I cut back on the number of tracks posted this time around and only two of them were actual single releases, but I just wanted to take the time to hear what people’s thoughts are on this rather undiscussed “grey area” situation and remind any LB representatives that I will kindly take tracks down without hesitation.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Artist Profile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.