Blood Red Shoes
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Blood Red Shoes

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The opening slot for was an incredibly opportunity for the band, though drummer and vocalist Steven Ansell admits that he didn’t expect fans of the band to be flocking to the shows. And that’s because he’s yet to properly figure out exactly who the band’s core audience is.

“Our audience is one that I don’t understand, and I quite like that,” says Ansell, reached by phone from his Brighton home after just arriving home from an American tour. “People come to see us for a variety of reasons, and we have very different people coming to our shows,” he continues. “Gaslight Anthem has a much more clear-cut crowd. There’s going to be a lot of people that are very confused by us, but that’s cool, that’s exciting. We’re going to have to surprise people, and we’re looking forward to it.”

Blood Red Shoes, who utilise a dual vocal attack throughout their frantic yet concise 2012 full-length In Time To Voices, have certainly took an active interest in trying to figure out exactly who their crowd may be. Having spent most of 2012 on the road, including their recent trip to the United States, Blood Red Shoes use every opportunity passed their way.

“On the surface, it would seem as if things were going better in the U.S. than anywhere else. But it’s difficult to compare when you go over there for the first time with three albums already; you’re much more aware as a band by that point. We’ve only done two tours there, but we hope to get back soon.”

Though still learning about their audience, the extensive touring Blood Red Shoes has done since their debut, 2008’s Box of Secrets has refined the band’s sonic approach. In Time To Voices is as terse a record as they’ve released. There’s an economy and efficiency that masters the intense friendship Ansell and guitarist Laura Mary Carter have formed. The result is a 1-2 punch laden with hooks.

“We went with our gut feeling this time around; if a song didn’t really jump out at us right away, we cut it out without really thinking about it. And maybe that’s how recording should be.” It’s put to Ansell then that Blood Red Shoes seems to have streamlined the songwriting process, but he quickly disagrees. Though there are just two members of the band, they still managed to consider all options when it came to writing the record. Feeling more confident than ever in the studio, Ansell attests that songs were pulled apart and reconstructed in an effort to find the best arrangement.

“Before, we’d just play and record the songs as they were written. We’d just jam and put the songs together out of jams. Yet this was the first one where we wrote each song in different ways. We’d just sing until we’d find the right melody. Instead of just jamming, we’d take the songs apart, try different arrangements and put them back together in different orders until we found what worked. It was important to just see what happened.

“We decided just to blow the doors off and try everything,” he adds, laughing.

Still, throughout the writing of the record, there were questions that needed to be asked. With three albums, Blood Red Shoes are no longer a young upstart act. Lyrically, themes of redemption litter the record, heard prevalently on the title track.

Ansell is aware of how much work the band has to do to stay afloat and stay relevant.

“We’ve moved from just being a couple of people who would just get on the road and taking a shot at being a band to a band that starts to questions things. We’d ask ourselves throughout the writing and record, ‘Can we still make this interesting? What is it that we’ve got to say? Where are we going as a band and as people?’ And we started questioning our sound a lot and questioning our relationship as people and our relationship with our fans.”

The ability to define their fanbase may still elude Blood Red Shoes, but for Ansell and Carter, defining their relationship is much easier. At the end of the day, being able to count on each other is what keeps the band in motion.
“We joke about it, but we like to think of ourselves as a gang, just a very small gang. I’d say we spend close to 300 days together, and that wouldn’t be possible unless we were the closest friends in the world.
“We’ll fuck with each other, but if anybody fucks with us, we’ll destroy them. It’s us against the world.”

BY JOSHUA KLOKE