Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 06/11/06
Label: Rough Trade

Sheffield's The Long Blondes are as sharp as the stilettos that three-fifths of them wear, as tight as the nipped-in waistband of singer Kate Jackson's habitual Edith Piaf get-up and as musically satisfying as a Siouxsie Sioux, Bryan Ferry, Patti Smith, Hazel O'Connor and Kathleen Hanna jam session in CBGBs circa 1965. The one-time Best Unsigned Band In The Country have come up trumps with a debut album brimming with whip-smart, post-riot-grrl attitude.

Wisely, they kick-off with "Lust In The Movies", a long-time highpoint of their terrific live show. Not only does this clangy, bass-heavy slab of indie knockabout serve as a blistering opener, but it also provides a handy crib sheet of their visual influences, with a chorus roll call of iconic old time movie stars "Edie Sedgwick, Anna Karina, Arlene Dahl..." No Pipettes-style glibness here, though. We're swiftly into the shiny-faced Top 40 friendliness of "Once And Never Again", a kind of spunky younger sister to The Strokes' "Last Night", and, like that song, an ode to youth that buries real poignancy behind a deceptively throwaway punk-pop facade.

Commentators tend to lay the credit for this immediately evident quality at the feet of frontwoman Jackson - despite her undeniably alluring voice being stretched to its grating limits on higher pitched efforts such as "Giddy Stratospheres". Yet this overlooks the band's true secret weapon - lyricist (and guitarist/keyboards/vocals dude) Dorian Cox who churns out narratives as compelling as anything on "Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not", and crisp, precise images ("She covers her chest up as if it were a national treasure" - "Only Lovers Left Alive"), with the fluent dependability of the speaking clock.

By putting his words into the mouth of a woman, he also creates in Jackson a most intriguing persona: that of an oh-so-slightly predatory female to a young protégée. Witness "Once And Never Agains"'s sly "Oh, how I'd love to feel a girl your age" and the plot of "Heaven Help The New Girl" - ex-girlfriend saves current girlfriend from nasty bloke's clutches and they drive into the country together (a theme revisited by Jackson herself in one of her two contributions, "Separated By Motorways").

If the latter's provincial romanticism sounds like a side-step into The Smiths' territory, there's more where that came from. Lines like "I feel like CC Baxter in Wilder's apartment" ("You Could Have Both") and references to cult photographers Lee Miller and Man Ray align them with the great tradition of English intellectual pop that stretches from Morrissey and Lloyd Cole down to fellow townsfolk Pulp (whose Steve Mackey produces here) and beyond. On this evidence, The Long Blondes have a gift that will long outlive the novelty value provided by their pencil skirts.

    by Anna Britten