Their mix of unschooled enthusiasm, pop culture voraciousness, and eye for a glittering hook give them a leg up on their sometimes dowdy contemporaries, and affix them securely on the continuum that scratches from Roxy Music to Blondie to Pulp. With the help of Pulp's Steve Mackey on production duties, the band hammer out a dozen memorable songs (mostly written by guitarist Dorian Cox), punctuated by some all-time classics. Following a series of exciting singles that served notice that the Long Blondes were on the cusp of brilliance thanks to their energetic marriage of post-punk energy, new wave hooks, and junk shop glamour, the group delivered the goods like Santa on Christmas. Someone to Drive You Home is one of those albums that's honest to goodness fun, and pulling it off with as much pastiche as the Long Blondes makes it one of the year's nicest arrivals.Someone to Drive You Home is a perfect debut album. Meanwhile, their ballads, such as the cinematic "A Knife for the Girls" and "Heaven Help the New Girl" are equally convincing in sound and style.ĭefining what it means to be in a pop band might prove difficult in 2006, for what is pop music anymore? Lucky for us, the Long Blondes have figured it out for themselves. Just one listen to "Once and Never Again" will make you a believer: its girlish harmonies and cheeky outlook suggest that leaving that guy behind won't hurt too much, after all, "You're only nineteen for God's sake, you don't need a boyfriend." Singles such as "Weekend Without Makeup" and "Giddy Stratospheres," and B-side "Lust in the Movies" arrive in new form, with Jackson growling and cooing alongside Dorian Cox and her jangly, Smiths-like guitars. The Long Blondes make it all seem dangerously romantic, but in a coquettish kind of way - the joys of being a girl have never seemed so lovely or sexy, hence the impure thoughts of "Swallow Tattoo" - "Give me a good film noir and a bottle of gin." Pulp alumnus Steve Mackey adds the perfect amount of polish to these 12 playful, guitar-driven songs. The quintet, which is fronted by femme fatale vocalist Kate Jackson, will make you fall in love with their girlish innocence, then steal your boyfriend and break your heart. Following in the shabbily glamorous footsteps of fellow Sheffield residents Pulp, the Long Blondes' debut album, Someone to Drive You Home, is a snappy pop album of quintessentially English vignettes about how growing up is hard to do.
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March 2023
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