Long Blondes

Kentish Town Forum, London - 21 Apr 2008

by Dave Evans

The Emperor's new clothes look very nice indeed. Shame about the music

"Preaching individuality is all well and good but when your own band sounds like an identikit rehash of Siouxsee And The Banshees you can end up looking a little daft"

If the mannequins that surround the Forum stage are meant to be comments about the conformity and unoriginality of everyday life then it would appear that the irony is lost on The Long Blondes. Preaching individuality is all well and good but when your own band sounds like an identikit rehash of iconic feminist punk bands like Siouxsee And The Banshees and to a lesser extent The Slits you can end up looking a little daft.

Unless of course you happen to be as fantastically dressed as Kate Jackson and cohorts. The girls here are dressed in trademark Jackson coloured tights and neckerchieves and the fact that Jackson has updated her image and now looks like Betty Page in Victorian swimwear should see plenty of action at the capital's flea markets over the next few weekends. Put simply, most of the girls want to be Jackson (yet another blow for individuality there) and most of the boys just want her, or one of her look-alikes.

The image is worth talking about though because although The Long Blondes are a good band, and would rock your local pub or even a decent mid-sized venue, they are not up to headlining a stage of this size. Put simply, they’ve been promoted beyond their ability and a lot of that comes down to the fact the music is merely part of the package.

The new ‘disco’ direction doesn’t really come over in the live environment either and most of the new songs sound a bit stodgy, Dorian Cox proving over-reliant on the chorus pedal for those early Cure guitar effects. When you add in the fact that Screech drums exactly like Budgie and Jackson sings like an, erm, banshee, you can’t help thinking that should Susan Ballion happen by the door, her lawyers can start booking world cruises.

Old post-punk songs like ‘Weekend Without Make Up’, ‘Seperated By Motorways’ (a riff, a tune, at last), ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ and ‘Once And Never Again’ stand up best. The simplicity and catchy choruses prove themselves able to transcend their influences, just!

The set list is a little lame too though. There’s no journey here, just one shouty pop song after another. Attempts at mixing it up with some Pulpesque spoken interjections and a few Blondie dance beats come across simply as that – attempts. From such promising beginnings The Long Blondes look seriously in danger of being a band with only one decent album in them, albeit an extraordinarily well dressed one.

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