|
|
|
The Long Blondes Interview |
|
Words: Everett True
|
Photography: Cat Stevens
Pop said. When I was a child, the half-hour walk
to primary school led me across a busy road, the
A12. It wasn’t a motorway, and either side was
punctuated by trees, gravel pits and hidden copses
where if you didn’t run fast and wily you’d quickly
be pinned down, but there was no denying that the
folk who lived on the new housing estate near the
Junior School didn’t hang around with us kids who
lived in the old part of town. We were separated by
a trunk road.
One time, I walked slap bang into a lamppost.
After that, I kept my eyes open.
Do you find that you intimidate audiences?
Kate Jackson (voice, songs): “I hope so.”
Dorian Cox (guitar, songs): “Not intimidated,
but…”
Kate: “I don’t think so. They never fail to come
over to us afterwards.”
Dorian: “The intimidated ones scurry off home
to write on message boards, ‘The Long Blondes
were crap’.”
Screech Louder (drums): “Jealousy, nothing
wrong with it. It’s a human emotion.”
Oh blimey fuck. I don’t know. I’m so unused to
doing interviews these days. You know how to
do interviews. You tell me how to do it.
“Ask us a string of questions about how we
formed and what our influences are and all that
stuff,” suggests Screech. OK. The Long Blondes
formed in Sheffield in 2003 and, after releasing
a handful of singles on a variety of cool labels,
have been snapped up by Rough Trade. Until
recently, Cox worked in admin at Sheffield
University (“It was getting embarrassing, the
number of students asking me for autographs”),
Jackson sold vintage clothes on e-Bay, Louder
was briefly at the Home Office and the other two
members, Emma Chaplin (keyboards) and Reenie
Hollis (bass) worked in a Leeds art library and in
the media studies department of a Rotherham
college respectively.
Their interests are…oh, wait. I get it. I’m
supposed to ask them that.
Do you recognise yourself in the mirror?
Kate: “How do you mean? I don’t know what
you’re getting at! At home…?”
I don’t recognise myself in the mirror.
Kate: “I’m very, very used to seeing myself.”
Screech: “I try to avoid looking in mirrors as
much as possible.”
Emma: “I’m the same, especially if I’m on a night
out. You don’t want to see the sick truth!”
Screech: “Yeah, mirrors and tape recorders.”
Emma: “I don’t like looking at photographs of
me at all.”
Kate: “I do. I look at pictures of me a lot,
because there are lots of pictures of me all over
the place now.”
When you’re singing, do you know what you
sound like?
Kate: “When I hear recordings back I do, yeah.”
How do you do that?
Kate: “I’ve got a good voice, mate!”
lonely this christmas
So I was listening to your single ‘Christmas Is
Cancelled’ earlier, and my wife pointed out that it
sounds exactly like Elvis Costello’s ‘Oliver’s Army’.
“A lot of people have said that,” replies Screech.
“Do you know The Vichy Government? They did
a cover of it and mixed the lyrics to ‘Oliver’s Army’
in, and it sounded great.”
“I’m quite pleased with that,” says Dorian. “It’s
always nice to give Elvis Costello a leg-up. I thought
I’d do what I could.”
Context. This is important. Pop said, trust in
me and if you’re sweet and calm and wear floral patterned
shirts on Tuesdays and keep taking
the piano lessons, maybe I’ll re-introduce you to
some decent music every 16 years. Pop said, it’s
the Christmas records that are the most special,
because they have a head start – they’re already
about a special occasion – and the most special
ones of all are the ones that mix melancholy with
the tinsel, heartache alongside the happiness – and
the reason you fell so heavily, headily for The Long
Blondes, Sheffield’s finest if we leave aside near
neighbours Arctic Monkeys (and we’ll do that for
many, many reasons), is because they did all this on
their free Christmas download of a couple of years
back, a song you placed on play and repeat on
iTunes one rainy winter in Seattle. Yet it’s taken
you this long to realise its similarity to Costello. And
this, after you heard The Long Blondes’ pink vinyl
debut single, ‘New Idols’/’Long Blonde’ (SPC) and
had them initially tagged as a fine reprise of The
Au Pairs’ agonised, political, early Eighties groove.
Where do you fit in with the current pantheon
of music? I’m not clued in on it right. All I listen to
is what I like, and anything else I don’t like I don’t
listen to.
“That’s the best way to be,” nods Screech.
I was watching the Live Forever documentary…
“Is that the Britpop one?” the drummer asks.
“Yeah,” confirms Dorian. “I’ve seen that. The
saving grace is Jarvis – and Liam’s hilarious.”
It depressed me.
Screech: “It is a bit…”
Dorian: “…self-serving…”
I’m guessing you don’t relate to Blur…
“No,” exclaims Screech, horrified. “No,” he
repeats. “We’re very much not Blur. I can think of
a few bands around that are Blur. We’re not.”
So what is the context you exist within? What
about these almost mythical labels like the Sheffield
Phonographic Corporation and the Angular
Recording Company you’ve released singles on,
with their anachronistic artwork and fond regard
for vinyl? These people are stars in my world: the
abrasive mix of teen punk and jagged refrains they
keep releasing, scouring the UK for like minds.
I’m talking the minimalist art school frenzy of
Champion Kickboxer, those crafty magpies Smokers
Die Younger, the very excellent Motherfuckers, the
even more excellent Fucks, the Virginian chicken
farmer Charles E Cullen. I’m talking The Violets’
Gothic screech, yes, Art Brut (and there’s nothing
wrong with that), Luxembourg’s glam pout and
The Sweethearts’ gentle femme-pop (“Me, my
housemates, a bottle of Lambrini, a Casio and
a four track,” writes Angular co-founder Joe).
Isn’t this The Long Blondes’ world, not all
those dumb-ass awards ceremonies where Kate’s
been nominated for ‘Sexiest Female’ and a bunch
of skinny boys with perfectly tousled hair and
a collection of Hives and Yeah Yeah Yeahs singles
rub shoulders deferentially with Chris Martin.
“We’ve met a lot of likeminded people on the
way up,” agrees Dorian, “but when we started, we
thought we were the only ones. We thought we’d
be up against macho laddism – soundmen in shorts.
But then these people cropped up.”
Your lyrics: it’s rare to hear a woman singing
them…
“I think it’s rare for males to be singing them,”
corrects Dorian. “I can’t think of any other bands
that are doing it.”
Sardonic social commentary mixed with tearyeyed
heartache? I read somewhere that’s what
the Arctic Monkeys do. I listened to their record
and didn’t hear it myself, couldn’t get past that
horrendous drumbeat, but…
“It’s completely different,” counters Screech.
“Alex is an auteur at what he does – social
commentary in the vaguest sense. But I think, and
this is not necessarily a criticism, they have a very
laddish and braggish attitude. That’s not us. To use
a hideous soundbite, they’re in the gutter looking
at the gutter and we’re in the gutter looking up
at the stars. Our lyrics are much more aspirational.
We’re saying we’re in this situation and we’d like
to escape it, and they’re saying they’re in a situation
and they quite like it.”
dry your eyes, sunday girl
There are so many ways I don’t relate to The Long
Blondes. One: they know about kissing. Two, their
new single is called ‘Weekend Without Make Up’.
Weekend? I spent my entire early twenties
without deodorant or hair styling, in 10-inch
polyester flares hawked from jumble sales (charity
stores were too grand for me) and no, I didn’t
have a girlfriend, now you mention it. All I had
was a plastic bag swinging gaily from my hand,
containing vinyl and crisps packets and spectacles,
as I hopped from one foot to another in abandon,
out of time.
So many different ways: they understand about
cool and poise and chic and why Continental people
are cooler than Brits, and why comic book artists
are obsessed with the Victorians, and what it’s like
to throw up purple puke over your glitter-streaked
face, and how to cherish a pair of shoes, and
the attraction certain icons (Warhol starlet Edie
Sedgwick, Sixites film star Anna Karina) have over
others, and what it’s like to have friends you can
have conversations with. I’m 45 and I still don’t
understand any of that stuff. All I can grasp at
are certain mannerisms, the way a wrist is flicked
downward, a yelped backing vocal, resonance
and pure, clear female voices dipping and soaring
and rising gracefully upward, and yeah, lust etc.
“The Long Blondes,” someone whispers, “are
the ultimate fantasy pop group: Jean Harlow, Mae
West, Nico, Nancy Sinatra and Barbara Windsor.”
A weekend? Man, these kids know how to
make a man feel insignificant. I wish I’d paid more
attention to The Go-Betweens. They’d have taught
me how to wear eyeliner.
What is yo
| | |
