Alternative
V2 Records · 18 September 2026
«Start to End» opens Blood Red Shoes’ seventh record with the same line-up as always: Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and vocals, Steven Ansell on drums and also singing, and nothing else. What’s changed is behind the scenes. The two of them wrote, recorded, produced and mixed it themselves, with no manager, no A&R and no outside producer, and the result sounds direct and dry, with just enough space for the melodies to cut through the noise.
«Get Back into Myself» hangs its hook on a squealing distorted guitar rather than on a chorus. «Two Weeks» drifts into a synth-rock that owes more to Depeche Mode than to any guitar band, and «2020 on TV» is built over an electronic loop. When the two of them sing together, as on «Screams», the drive of their earliest records comes back, overdrive pushed right to the front.
The problem shows up once you add up all ten tracks. A good chunk of the record settles into a mid tempo and stays there, the vocals delivered with a certain weariness over otherwise carefully worked arrangements, and the layer of glitch and effects gets applied so consistently that it ends up sanding down the roughness that made the duo recognisable in the first place. «Grande Valse» is the extreme case: a cabaret waltz that sets itself up and goes nowhere.
«Stay Lonely» came out on 18 September via V2 Records, twenty-two years after Carter and Ansell first started playing together in Brighton. They’re presenting it in Barcelona on 3 October, at Razzmatazz 2.
Rating: 7/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre